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AMONG THE ESKIMOS
LABRADOR

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OLD RUTH IN HER BEST DREssS

This is the Eskimo woman’s most fashionable costume. She keeps it for special occasions. For
ordinary weather the whole dress is of blanket, with sealskin boots and an outer smock (sillapak)
of white calico.

;

AMONG THE ESKIMOS
OF LABRADOR

A RECORD OF FIVE YEARS’ CLOSE
INTERCOURSE WITH THE ESKIMO
TRIBES OF LABRADOR

S. K. HUTTON, M.B., Cu.B. Vict.

wy}
; FELLOW OF THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY

WITH FORTY-SEVEN ILLUSTRATIONS
& TWO MAPS

TORONTO
THE MUSSON BOOK COMPANY
LIMITED
IgI2

Printed by BALLANTYNE, Hanson & Co,

At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh

PO NO A ei ag om

~e
. —

AUTHOR’S NOTE

OE, OR I I Ee

Tue author would like to express his obligation
_ to Dr. Wilfrid T. Grenfell for the use of the
_ large map at end of this book.

October 1911.

CONTENTS

. CHAPTER I
PAGE
‘y neighbour the Eskimo . , Bik oi jhe Soe - 21-24

CHAPTER II

nek — Nearing Killinek—Eskimos on board—The stepping-
stones—Tent life—Snow houses—The Iglo#-Old Tuglavi—The
troubles of a photographer—Superstitions—The old woman of
the sea—The happy hunting grounds . ? > : ‘ - 25-45

CHAPTER III
t sight of Labrador—Arrival at Okak . ; ° . » + 46-54
CHAPTER IV
‘The freezing of the sea—Sealskin clothes and boots—Winter cold—
- Thehome-coming. . ‘ AG Ape ae a - « 55-65
CHAPTER V
c John . . . *. . > . . . . . > 66-75
. CHAPTER VI
An Eskimo wedding—Home life. . . «+ ; Oy aaa
CHAPTER VII
Choosing names—Eskimo childhood—Dolls—Sledges and dogs—
Punting on the ice—The little hunter—In school . . ~~ 87-100
x CHAPTER VIII

‘Birthdays—A hard-working people—Joshua the ivory carver— ‘
A Clothing and cleanliness—Old age. ; ; . . 101-113
<i xiil

CONTENTS

CHAPTER IX
Making a sledge—My first sledge journey . > ° , ‘ . 114-12

CHAPTER X

An urgent call—Along the ice edge—Our guide—A comic touch—
Starting home—Over theland . ; : k é ‘ . 129-141)

CHAPTER XI j
A providential check—Soft snow—Sledge dogs . : : ; . 142-158

CHAPTER XII

My drivers—-I[wo Jonathans—My box—Old Kollek gets caught—A
snow house—A wolf—A pb §2 -mile trot—A viaiopnialy on the |
road—My frozen nose... . 154-168

CHAPTER XIII

A run to Nain—A camping accident—A summons home—Singing us
off—Into the storm—Lost on the mountain—Julius to the rescue
—An uncomfortable night . J ; ; ‘ > ; - 170-180

CHAPTER XIV

A drowning accident—-A breakdown on the mountain—Johannes ina
storm—Crossing acrevice . . ». «+ «+ » « 181-19]

CHAPTER XV
‘Daniel—A hundred miles in an open boat—Daniel as cook—Daniel’s

house—The old widow. . . +» .«. « 5 ape . laa

CHAPTER XVI
Out with the seal hunters—The harpoon—Shooting a seal—A grue-
some custom—Hauling thenet . . ., «-. « . + 204-2
CHAPTER XVII
At the edge of the ice—A ee ae a walrus—Martin’s first
seal ag aif i + + of es 215-225)
CHAPTER XVIII

Fur trapping—A New Year’s godsend—The reindeer hunt , ° 226-240
X1V ‘

CONTENTS
CHAPTER XIX

PAGE
The spring flitting—Seal yee among the floes—Tent life—The
hunter’s return. : . ‘ . ; » 241-252
CHAPTER XxX
Cod-fishing—Tents—A Polar bear—Mosquitoes—Building , . 253-263
CHAPTER XXI
Suuiedhelospital . =. 0. kw lle wt 28K BTS
CHAPTER XXII
Beds for the hospital—Eskimo patients—Native foods . ‘ . 274-286
. CHAPTER XXIII
- Lizetta—Broken—Native doctors—Superstitions ; F ‘ . 287-296
CHAPTER XXIV
Eskimo cousins—Visiting—Out with the motor boat. ‘ . - 297-306
od OHAPTER XXV
ape houses—Making windows—Stubborn learners—A scrub-
bing brush episode—My harmonium—Good humour . : . 307-318
a)
a CHAPTER XXVI
A lonely land—The coming of the ee postman—
4 Labrador gardens—The language Nelo te . : - 319-329
CHAPTER XXVII
Eskimos andthe Mission . . yaks ahs ae - » «+ 880-340
| XV

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Old Ruth in her Best Dress .

Labrador

A Labrador Iceberg
A Group of Killinek Eskimos
Old Tuglavi’s Iglo

| _ The Sea Front at Okak

Ramah
Eskimo Faces

_A Fishing Camp .

The Author, Home from a Winter Walk
An Eskimo Nursemaid .
The Baby’s Nest .

The Eskimo Boy .

_The Eskimo Pocket
On the Way to Church
An Old Woman Fishing

An Eskimo Woman Scraping a Sealskin
Walrus Tusks and Ivory Carvings.
Found in Heathen Graves

An Interesting Event .

Dogs Fishing

My Drivers . . .
Geshé, an Eskimo Sledge Dog

- Julius and a Snow House

XVli

Frontispiece
20
22
28
40
48
48
52
60
60
82
82
96

108
108
110
110
124
124
138
150
156
156
164

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The Tired Dogs .

The Unwilling Puppy .

A Sledge Party ,

The Author in Travelling Costume

Seal Hunters : ;

An Eskimo with his Kajak .

Home from the Hunt .

Winter Fishing

The Spring Flitting

The Breaking Ice

Tent Life

Maria .

Okak Hospital ; ;

An Eskimo Great-Grandmother .

An Eskimo Woman from Nachvak

Old Iglos at Hebron

An Elaborate Snow Porch

An Eskimo Boat Builder :
Jerry, Organist and Bandmaster at Okak
The Eskimo Schoolmaster

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SKETCH MAP OF THE COAST OF LABRADOR

|
f AMONG
sg ESKIMOS OF LABRADOR

CHAPTER I

Tue Eskimos

HIS book presents a plain picture of the

Eskimos of Labrador, a people among whom
I have lived for some years past, and with whom I
have come into the closest contact; in their homes,
‘im their work, in their hunting and their journeys,
in sickness and in health. I called them my
neighbours, not only because they lived close by,
but because they showed kindness to me; and I
have pictured them as I found them, a kindly and
hospitable folk, quick to anger and quick to forgive,
whose outlook on life, whose thoughts and ways of
reasoning, differ strangely from our own.

The land they live in is a contrast to ours. Can
‘we imagine a wider difference than that between
England—the smiling “merrie England” that the
poets love to sing—and the bleak, rock-bound coast
which is the home of my neighbour the Eskimo ?
| We speak of Labrador as a country, but, if truth
be told, we only know it as a coast. To the
Eskimos it is very little more. Their home is by
the water’s edge: they gain their living from the

THE ESKIMOS

sea. Fishing, sealing, and walrus-hunting are their
staple pursuits; their knowledge of the land itself —
is limited to the few miles they tramp to their fox- ‘
traps, and the longer journeys that they make in ~
the spring on the tracks of the reindeer. They
tell of a vast rolling wilderness behind the rocky —
heights that front the sea; of untold miles of crisp —
moss upon which no man has ever trodden. Their
words bring up an awesome picture of a bare and
desolate waste, silent but for the twittering of bird:
and the dismal howling of the hungry wolf, or the 2
even more dismal howling of the wind. An un-
known land! With nothing to tempt the seeker ©
for wealth, and little to attract the hardy explorer,
it remains, year after year, wrapped in its awful —
solitude. The footsteps of pioneers have already ©
crossed the wilderness, but behind the rocky height
of the Eskimo Labrador the solitude remains.
Here and there along the coast line of this lonely |
land are little clusters of huts and tents, and in |
them dwell the people who have made it their home —
—the Innuit race, “the People,” as they call them- |
selves, better known as the Eskimos. E |
How they came to the land is a matter for con- —
jecture. A study of their features and habits ie
language brings me to the conclusion that they are _
physically allied to the Mongols of Asia; they a e
obviously identical with the Eskimos of Greenland, —
and closely related to those of Alaska. i)
And so it seems likely that in bygone times |
their forefathers dwelt upon the Siberian coast,
Perhaps their adventurous spirit droye them fort Ha
perhaps tribal warfare made them fly for their lives;

however that may have been, it seems that they
22 a

LABRADOR: A VIEW WESTWARD, NEAR OKAK

Bare black rocks, winding fiords, bold heights and headlands, a pure and bracing air, and a sea
of marvellous clearness, combine to make the land strangely attractive. Only the mosquitoes spoil
the perfection of the short summer, abounding in unbearable swarms.

A LABRADOR ICEBERG

A constant procession of these icebergs passes the coast in the summer-time, brought by the
current from the north. It is impossible to realise the huge size of some of them, since about
nine-tenths of an iceberg is under water.

THE ESKIMOS

launched their skin canoes and square-ended umiaks ©
(or women’s boats), and crossed the perilous waters
of what we know as Behring’s Strait. They
found fish and seals along the Alaskan coast, and
some were well content to settle there. Others
fared further, slowly wandering along the North-
West Passage before ever the civilised world dreamt

of its existence. Some reached Greenland; some

came southward to Labrador; wherever they saw
seals in plenty, there they stayed until their roving
spirit drove them on. And so it seems to have
come about that in Alaska, in Baffin’s Land, in
Greenland and Labrador, there are Eskimos, wide
apart as miles go, but close together in speech and
ways of living. We do not know whether the
North-West Passage holds any proof of this long-
ago migration ; its shores are barren and unexplored ;
but probably upon this or that rocky promontory
could be found the typical burying-places of the
heathen Eskimos.

But I must bring my story into the bounds of
modern times. To write of the Eskimos as they
were in bygone days would be a fascinating thing,
but it would mean building upon a slender foun-
dation. No, the past of the Eskimo people must
always remain something of a mystery. They have
no written records: they are a nation without a
history !

It is not very many years since civilization
reached them; and so as I wandered among the hills
of Labrador I found flint weapons and soft stone
cooking-pots beside graves whose bones had not yet
returned to dust. Armed with their flint-tipped

_ arrows they hunted the bear and the reindeer;

THE ESKIMOS

balanced in tiny skin canoes they followed the seal —
and the walrus, with flint harpoon ready to hand; —
they looked after the needs of their bodies, and that ‘+

was all. They superstitiously dreaded some vague ~

and malignant Power; they paid tribute to the men ~
who were supposed to live in league with this —
Being; they lived their hopeless life and passed —

away into the dark. Generation followed generation —

in the same dismal course: they made no progress. —
It was to this people that the missionaries of the —
Moravian Church came in the year 1771, bringing the ~
good news of Jesus Christ the Saviour of the world, —
and bringing a power into the hearts of the Eskimos —
that has elevated them to a life of hope and progress, —
and made them law-abiding, Christian citizens.

The nearest glimpse we can get of the Eskimos |

as they were in olden times, is among that tribe —
which has settled at Killinek, the northernmost tip |
of Labrador. I have thought it well, therefore, to
write first of them, and then to turn back to my old

home at Okak, and write of the Eskimos as I knew |
them so well—a people born and brought up in ~

Christian villages, and living the life which God —

intended them to live on their bare and inhospitable _
coast, unspoiled by that darker side which so often

shows uppermost when civilization reaches nature ~
peoples. .

mr se

—— +

CHAPTER II

Neartna Kititinex—Eskmos oN Boarnp—My Guipre—Tue Srep-
ping Srones—Tent Lire—Snow Hovuses—Tuet Icauo—O.up
Tueiavi—Tue Trousies or A PHoTOGRAPHER—SUPERSTITIONS
—Tue Oxip Woman or THE SEa—TuHe Happy Huntine
Grounps—Leavine KILLINEK

J T was a sunny September morning in 1908. I

stood on the deck of the little Mission ship
Harmony, watching the bare black rocks of the
northernmost Labrador. I was going to see Killinek,
one of the loneliest Mission stations in the world.

The scenery was terribly bleak, in spite of the sun-

shine, and I thought to myself, “ What an unpromising
place! Nothing to see but rocks and water!” On the

‘one hand the restless Atlantic, broken here and there

by tiny islets, mere jagged rocks sticking out of the

water, and half buried in foam; on the other hand a

line of dull coast rising steeply from the sea; a rugged
line of black, only relieved by the scattered patches
of grey where the moss had found a hold, and by
the streaks of rusty iron ore and the glint of falling
water. It was a picture of utter desolation, and yet
I knew that somewhere among those rocks an Eskimo
village nestled; those rocks, to me no more than a
picture of barren grandeur, had a different look to

Eskimo eyes. They brought visions of seals and

walrus, of fat codfish eager to be taken, of shy birds

trapped on their flight to more promising places;
25

ESKIMOS ON BOARD

dreams, in fact, of plenty; and that was why this
tribe of wandering hunters settled in Killinek. ‘
The stout little vessel fought her way through the —
awkward currents of Gray’s Straits: there were two }
men clinging to the wheel, steadying the ship as she —
danced and throbbed, and the water was all broken ~
by little whirlpools on which the sea-birds feared to §

settle. But this was the way to Killinek; and
presently we caught a glimpse of the village through }
a rift in the line of rocks. A flag fluttered up as we
passed, and little puffs of smoke among the Eskimo ~
tents showed us that the people were firing guns to _
welcome the ship. It seemed only a tiny point of |
life in the most desolate land imaginable, but it |
brightened us up; and when the rocks hid it from us ©
as we passed on towards the harbour mouth, we felt ©
as if the sunshine had gone. :
We turned into a narrow, deep channel, plenti-
fully sprinkled with buoys and marks, and dropped
anchor in sight of the Mission station. We were at ~
once surrounded by a swarm of skin canoes, each ©
paddled by a smiling, brown-faced Eskimo. Boats, ~
crowded with women, and with the water all but ©
pouring in, flopped about, waiting for a chance to
come alongside; and almost as soon as the anchor
had found the bottom the deck was crowded. The |
folks jostled one another, and peered into our faces. —
“‘Aksunai, aksunai,” they said; ‘welcome! be strong. a
Those of us who knew how to talk started chatting —
right away; the less favoured contented themselves |
with handshakes and grins, and shouts of “ Hooks- |
and-eyes” or “ Auctioneer,” a parody of “ Aksunai,”
at which the Eskimos laughed uproariously. The |}
cook’s galley was besieged: here was something new. _

MY GUIDE

* Ai-ai’s” of astonishment greeted the mystery of
potato peeling. The ship’s cat caused quite a stampede,
to its own tremendous alarm. It bounded up the
rigging like a streak, amid a chorus of “Sun4 und”
(what's that) ?—* Kappé-é” (what an awful thing) !
There it sat palpitating, with hair all bristling, while
some one who had seen a cat before told his excited

_ friends that this was ‘“ Poosee-kullik” (poor little
pussy) !

But this was no time for dawdling; here was a
fine day going, with work waiting to be done. The
“mate’s voice called for hatches off, and everybody
volunteered for work. The event of the year, the

; Binloeding of the ship, had begun.

I went ashore to explore the village. It was no
_ easy matter to get a guide, because everybody was
_ busy on the ship or on the landing-stage; but I
- finally managed to button-hole a middle-aged man

' (only he had no button-holes, nor yet buttons,

f because he wore the characteristic Eskimo “ attigék ”

ior “ dicky”), who spent all his spare time in leading

_ me around and showing me the sights. We climbed
‘the hill behind the village, so that I might get some

idea of the scenery. Like a true Eskimo he trotted

up at about five miles an hour, while I panted and

_ stumbled behind him in a partly successful attempt

to keep him in sight.

From the top of the hill we saw the snow-capped
heights of inland Labrador, and on the seaward
"horizon the long chain of flat islands which we call
| the “ Buttons.” |
| Bob, or Baab, as he called himself, grew com-
municative.

‘ Those are the Tutjat,” he said.
Q7

THE STEPPING-STONES

«Tutjat,” I thought, “the Stepping Stones”
and there flashed through my mind the old stony ®)
that the Eskimos tell, how their forefathers visited
the Innuit of the Far North long, long ago.

They came along the coast, so runs the story,
to Killinek—the End, or Limit, as the meaning of ©
the word is—and crossed Gray’s Strait in their skin —
canoes. They travelled from one to the other of the —
long chain of islands as they journeyed northward, _
and called them Tutjat or Stepping Stones asa
memorial. 3

It struck me that the name is a proof of the _
truth of the old tale. The name remains, but the ~
story is half forgotten. y

Sometimes in an evening, when pipes are lit ~
and tongues are loosed, the Eskimos will talk of —
those old times. They will tell how their ancestors —
made this marvellous journey, and found a people |
across the sea whose words they could understand:
Eskimos they were, and only different from the ©
Innuit of Labrador because they had lived apart 4
so long. ee

And as we looked at the Button Islands, Bob f
had a far-away look in his restless eyes. He ran”
his fingers through his tumbled hair; his face grew
eager ; he waved his pipe towards the north. “ Yes,”
he said, “those are the Tutjat ; those are the Tatjet,
I went there last autumn, and found plenty of seals,
I got a big walrus: I went after him in my kajak
(skin canoe), and I harpooned him. I chose him”
because he was big: he had such fine tusks to make 4
new harpoons, and his skin was good and thick and ~
strong, and I wanted a new whip for the dogs. —

Yes, those are the Tutjat, and I have been there.
28 tf

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Mires e
i GRE BRA a et

A Group OF KILLINEK ESKIMOS

_ The northern Eskimos are more weather-beaten in appearance than those farther south, as they
live mainly in snow huts and tents, without fires, cheerfully enduring the most terrible climate
| maginable. The object on the wall is a sealskin, scraped for boot-making and pegged out to dry.

THE STEPPING-STONES

I shall go again some day, for I think I shall catch
a white bear, and his skin is fine and warm. It is
only seldom that we can go to the Tutjat, for the
tide is very strong against our kajaks, and it is far.
But I will go to the farthest of the Tutjat, where
we can sometimes see Tutjarluk.”

Tutjarluk! Another link in the old chain!

From the farthest of the Button Islands, or
Stepping Stones, they can sometimes see Tutjarluk,

“the Big Stepping Stone.”
3 There it is, away in the haze, a , blue-grey patch
where sky and sea meet; Resolution Island, ‘the
_ Big Stepping Stone” of the old Eskimo story. The
link is perfect, for from Resolution Island it is
but a step to Baffin’s Land.

It was fine to see the enthusiasm in Bob’s ruddy
Eskimo face as he thought of that white bear hunt
which was awaiting him among the Tutjat ; but he
had said his say; he smoothed his mop of coal-black
hair with his broad, plump hand, and with his pipe’
between his teeth he turned to lead me to the village.

«Where do you live?” I asked him.

He pointed along a winding stony path to a
smoke-blackened calico tent. ‘‘Tuppiga” (my tent),
he said, and trotted amiably on. The tent was no
more than a bunch of poles with a calico cover
thrown over them; the poles stuck out through a
hole in the top, and the cover was kept in place by
big stones laid upon its edge. The ground was too
rocky for tent-pegs, and doubtless stones were the
next best thing; but I thought with a shiver of the
probable fate of the tent on some wild autumn night.

* Does your tent never blow over?” I said.

He laughed. “Oh yes, it sometimes blows over
29

TENT LIFE

;
}
when the wind is strong; but kujanna (never mind),
what does it matter? we can soon crawl out and —
- set it on its poles again and it is all right. The
stones do not blow away; they stay there all the —
time. When the winter comes, and we find snow to ~
build snow houses, we leave the stones lying till we —
can come again in the spring. I always put my
tent in the same place, for it is a good place. That
big rock shelters us from the north-west wind, and —
we can drink from that stream of water near by;
besides, we are close to the sea, and I can soon launch .
my skin canoe and go hunting the seals. Yes, it is ©
a good place, and I shall come again next year. ~
Some of the people do not find good places; they go ©
to fresh places each year; but my place is good.” |
His face was aglow again and I caught some of ©
his emotion; I felt the glamour of his simple life. -
I thought of the many times when I have come —
across the rings of stones, relics of deserted tenting-
places. They are generally in some grassy nook
near the seashore. ‘The rank grass grows over and ©
among them, and the sandy space which they surround ~
is strewn with fishbones and shells and all the other ~
litter of Eskimo tent life. There is an air of desola- ~
tion about these rings of stones. Their owners have ~
sought better places for their tents; they have had |
no fortune at the fishing and have gone to try ~
elsewhere; perhaps they have passed away and are |
forgotten. '
Bob stood for a moment deep in thought and ©
gently smiling. He was dreaming of bygone ~
tenting times; he was seeing visions of rare hauls of
seals and fish for the future; but his restless eyes —

lit on his tent again and he trotted on.
30

‘

TENT LIFE

We came upon a little girl squatting on the
ground, solemnly stirring the contents of a big black
cooking-pot which stood upon a rough fireplace of
stones. She fed the fire with bits of brushwood and
*“shooed” the hungry dogs away. She looked up
shyly as we passed, and I saw the family likeness at
once. She had the same tumbled mop of black hair,
the same little twinkling eyes, the same small nose
and plump ruddy cheeks, the same expression of
face, as her father. The sound of our footsteps
brought three or four other small folks scrambling
out of the tent, each one a repetition of the others on
a different scale. They joined hands and stood in
a row, gazing. with awestruck eyes at the stranger.
This was evidently part of Bob’s family, and a
| curious-looking lot they were. It was quite obvious
“that the rule of inheritance was observed in these
youngsters’ clothing. The trousers which adorned
the bigger boy were evidently Bob’s, patched and
puckered to the required size; one little girl had
a woman’s skirt on, all the way up, which gave her
"quite a picturesque appearance; they all seemed
to be wearing somebody else’s boots. And quite
right, too, I thought. They are scrambling over
the rocks all day long, romping with the dogs
and getting their clothes torn and muddied and
soaked; so I rather admired the wisdom of their
mother in dressing them up anyhow for their play.
|The children seemed quite content to stare until
further orders: they only grunted when I said
* Aksunai,” though a grunt in Eskimo is quite polite ; ;
| so I took a peep into the tent.

The half furthest from the door was evidently
the sleeping-place, for it was occupied by a sort of
3

TENT LIFE

platform of moss and earth spread with skins. The
mother was sitting on the edge of the bed, kneading
one of her husband’s boots. She looked up as we
appeared, with a good-humoured smile on her hande _
some ruddy face, and quietly went on with her
kneading. }

Other boots, turned inside out to dry, hung from i
the poles above her head; they were waiting to be
rubbed. This is one of the things that an Eskimgy
expects of his wife; she must keep his boots soft:
and you can well imagine the hunter coming it |
tired from his latest expedition, sprawling with loud {
snores upon the platform bed, while his wife takes
his boots and turns them inside out to dry, and

> a)

patiently rubs them supple, ready for his next excur- |

sion. Eskimo hunters take a pride in their boots. — :
Bob’s wife reached for another boot, and went.
on with her kneading. :
Close beside her, on an upturned tub, oe the a
seal-oil lamp. It was no more than a half-moon
shaped trough, hollowed from a soft stone, and he lf 4
filled with thick brown seal-oil. A flat wick of mos:
leaned on the edge of the trough, dipping into the
oil, and burning with a steady white flame. a
Mrs. Bob seemed to be doing a little otic ,
over her primitive lamp. A battered meat-tin, 1
castaway, no doubt, from the Mission ship, hung by
a string from one of the tent-poles, and twisted,
bubbling merrily, over the flame. From time to. |
time she picked up a spike of bone which lay beside
her, and poked the wick. This seemed to be i
the attention the lamp needed. On the floor I saw
a pot of seal’s blubber, from which the oil we

oozing. From this she could easily fill the lamp :

TENT LIFE

if it should burn low. I warrant she licks her
fingers after the filling; and more than that, if she
happens to fill the trough of the lamp too full I can
well imagine her taking a few sips.

I could not do much more than look into Bob’s
tent; there was no room. ‘The floor was strewn
with relics of work and mealtimes; scraps of seal-
skin, fishbones, chips of wood, bits of calico, either
flung down as useless or left by the children when
we interrupted their play. A fat, pale-faced baby
was crawling about, exercising its sturdy limbs
before returning to that queerest of queer cradles,
the hood of its mother’s smock. It found a bone, and
squatted to gnaw it, cutting its teeth and acquiring
a taste for the fishy flavour of seal meat at the same
ime. A family of pups romped and tumbled and
snarled in their own corner ; and all around the edge
# the tent lay dogs’ harness, spare clothing, sails
or the boat, and pots of seal meat and fish heads.

_ This was a Killinek Eskimo’s home. _

_ Bob was well-to-do in his way. He had a home
of his own, though it was only a grimy little tent,
30 small that I wondered how they all packed them-
elves in for the night.

_ Some folks are not so well off; they have to
share a tent with some other family, a custom which
eads to endless quarrels and jealousies. However,
{times are better since the missionaries came, and
the aim of every man to have his own tent or house
\s being realised in Killinek, just as it has been
fealised all along the coast.

And Bob was proud of his calico home.

The walls flapped in the breeze and strained
iwainst the poles.

33 c

TENT LIFE

« Doesn’t the rain come in sometimes ?” I asked
Bob looked at the hole in the top of the te .
where the cover was gathered round the bunch of
poles. “Oh yes,” he said, “the rain sometimes.
comes in and trickles down the poles, but we get out
of the way.” Admirable idea! Imagine the tent-_
dwellers on a rainy night. With real Eskimo good
humour they arrange themselves between the poles)
and watch the drops collect and trickle and drip beside”
them. What care they? They are dry, and that i
something to be thankful for. But sometimes they
are wet, for calico is not proof against the torrential
downpour that sometimes comes in summer time at
Killinek, I have seen them at work after a rainy |
night, soaked and bedraggled, and looking, as some=
body said, like drowned rats! But they went abou
their work with the same placid smile; their clothe
would dry in the wind and the sunshine. It is pa rt
of their life: they are content to take the <7 d
the smooth together. }
The hunter comes home from his morning’s toil
drenched with the rain and the spray. There is no
fire to give him warmth ; no stove to dry his sodden”
clothes ; nothing but a smoky seal-oil lamp. He)
takes no heed. He contentedly munches his meal}
of dried fish heads or raw seal meat, and flings
himself, wet as he is, on to the bed of moss and skin |
to sleep like a tired child. ‘They are a wonderfull
hardy folk, able to endure the incidents of the
rough life simply because it is their nature. Hunger
and exposure are parts of the very existence of 7
hunter, and only seem to harden him the more.
Sometimes, I think, the cold must be fearful for}

those Killinek tent-dwellers. From the moist days]
34 3

| TENT LIFE

‘of May, when the snow houses begin to melt and
‘threaten to tumble in upon their occupants, all
: through the changeable weather of the short summer
and the biting autumn storms, the Killinek Eskimos
ie in their tents. Cheerfully, and without a
ought that it is anything out of the ordinary, they
‘endure what would kill a Kuropean outright. In
November, when the sea is freezing and the rocks are
coated with salt-water ice, and the snow begins to
‘drift upon the land, they are still in their calico tents.
‘They put on their sealskin clothes, and defy the cold.
Bob seemed rather surprised when I asked him
whether they did not find it cold in the autumn.
“lléle” (certainly), he said, “ unet”; and with that
untranslateable answer I had to be content. ‘“ Unet”
may mean almost anything, or it may be simply an
expression and mean nothing. In Bob’s case I took
it to mean “ Of course; what a question! whatever
did you expect?” Bob’s eyes twinkled when I spoke
of the autumn. ‘Plenty of seals in autumn,” he said.
I knew what that meant to Bob; it meant plenty of
food and clothes and boots. The autumn seal hunt
comes at a most opportune time. It gives the
people plenty of their best and most fattening food
just when the cold weather is beginning to nip; it
makes them sleek and plump for the winter. Even
at Killinek the Eskimos do not look unduly tet
heir limbs have the smooth roundness of a child’s
chey are shapely and well proportioned ; but, all the
same, they have a fine natural protection against the
told. They need no fire to warm them. I have
en them on their visits to stations further south,
here the huts are warmed by stoves. ‘They pant

md perspire with the heat, and are glad to get out
35

SNOW HOUSES

of doors again. One woman who came to live at
Okak complained bitterly of the warmth. “It is’
breaking my life,” she said, “it is breaking my
life”; and it was fully a year before she became
acclimatised.

They escape from some of the hardships of
tent life when the time comes to move into
snow houses. It is generally on towards December i
before the snow lies hard enough for building; the
time varies, of course, according to the weather,
Mere snow is not enough; it must have been beaten” |
to stony hardness by the wind, and toughened by the)
cold, before it is fit to be cut into really durable
blocks. A snow house for an odd night’s shelter on}
a journey can be put up in a couple of hours, but a)
Killinek snow house, which must stand for weeks or
even months, takes a day or more in building,
There are no jerry-workmen in Killinek. They
shape the blocks with the greatest care, fitting and’
smoothing them into a tough wall in which no joint
are to be seen, and making the house into a perfec
beehive shape without a weak spot init. The floor
is below the level of the snow around, because the
blocks for building are cut from within the circle of
the wall. This makes the house look small and low
but I know of one which was fourteen feet across, |
and in which the missionary, a six-foot man, could |
stand upright and walk. Every house is protected:
by a wall of snow built round it a few feet away
this is a wise provision in a windy land like Labrador,
for it keeps the wind away, and the storms can onl
whistle about the rounded top, which offers the best |
possible shape for safety. |

The door is a hole, closed by a slab of frozet
36

ae
Ses

SNOW HOUSES
/

snow, and reached by a tunnel along which it is just
possible fora man to crawl. The tunnel is dug so
that it runs uphill to the door; partly because snow
Rises are usually built on a slope or bank, and
partly because it is the right thing to the inscrutable
Eskimo mind.

The window is a sheet of clear fresh-water ice,
which lights the house most gloriously. ‘The inside
of a new snow house is dazzlingly bright; even the
mean glimmer of the seal-oil lamp is reflected and
magnified by the shining white walls. ‘That is a
new snow house: but after a few weeks, what a
change! The walls are begrimed with soot and
grease, the floor is strewn with all the litter of an
Eskimo dwelling, the air is stuffy and ill smelling
nay, after a time the place becomes unbearable
even to its Eskimo tenants, and they build them-
selves a new house somewhere else. Not a very
difficult matter where good snow for ee is SO
ready to hand!
| I have found that a snow house makes a fairly
snug shelter, though the air never gets much above

reezing-point. |

Some men “do things in style,” and make quite
a suite of rooms by joining two or three snow huts
by tunnels. One hut serves as the living room, and
jmarbours the big stone lamp or stove; another is
the bedroom, spread with polar bear skins; and a
third may be a sort of unsavoury store house, piled
with dogs’ harness, seal blubber, skins, dried meat
And fish, and the tent stowed away till the thaw
pomes.

Beyond the snow house while the snow is hard,

‘ind the tent for the rest of the year, the Killinek
37

THE IGLO

Kskimos have very little choice in the matter of
housing; and to look at them, broad and strapping
folks that they are, you would agree that such a lifel ;
suits them well. Since the Mission reached them,
a few families have respectable little houses of
boards; but in former times the only alternative”
to tents and snow houses was the awful Eskime

iglo. There are’a few of these iglos in Killinek

dark and noisome dens.

Try to picture a hut of turf and stones, propped
maybe, on rough stumps and branches which have)
been toilsomely gathered from the sea: the only”
ventilation is the occasional breath of air that wafts)
sluggishly along the dark tunnel-like porch; the
only window is a square of membrane, brown and]
greasy-looking, stretched over a hole in the roof; |
the floor is a sodden patch of trampled mud! That}
is a heathen Eskimo iglo; and I cannot imagine }}
anything more dismally unhealthy. : |

If wooden houses are to be, the wood must be)
brought by ship. There are no trees in Killinek)))
The land looked bare and bleak enough, I thought,”
as I saw it from the ship; it looked far barer whe
I was actually on it, wandering among the hills)))
There were plenty of wild flowers, even in Killinekyy
and plenty of moss; but no wood. Here and there”
I came upon patches of feeble-looking brushwood”
crawling among the stones, dry and wizened, and)
this, I suppose, serves the people for fuel; but th
ground was bare of the berries which are such :
plentiful food-supply further south. The Killine
people have to go far afield to gather berries, mile
and miles of trudging over moss and rocks, to fin
here and there a massed | ane, while the Eskime

OLD TUGLAVI

at Ramah, only 150 miles away, gather barrelfuls
with the greatest ease. Killinek is the coldest, most
dismal, and barest of all the Labrador coast—but
it is the best seal and walrus hunting place of all.
The people overcome their difficulties somehow or
‘other. One old woman told me that she remembered
how the men used to travel as far as Okak, 800 miles
away, to fetch long trees for making sledges and
‘kajaks. Now they rely on the Mission, and on
chance trading or whaling ships, for an occasional
plank, or, greatest prize of all, a stick of tough
juniper wood or even an old baluster rail to make
a paddle.
_ My visit to Killinek would not be chronicled
completely if I said nothing about old Tuglavi. I
| saw him many a time as I wandered about among
_the rocks and the tents; a weird, wild-looking old
'man, with a childish smile on his face. He used
_ to follow me by hours at a time, muttering strangely
_to himself, and answering all my questions with
only a broadening of his constant smile. Poor old
{ Tuglavi! I gave up trying to draw any information
out of him after I had tried to take his portrait.
| I armed myself with a ship’s biscuit, and went in
search of Tuglavi. I found him near his iglo, and
offered him the biscuit.
He took it with a most delighted ‘‘ Thank you”
| “ Nakome-e-e-ek,” he said, ‘‘ nakomek.”
| ** Adsiliorlagit-ai” (let me take your photograph).
| “Sua?” (what ?)
| ** Will you let me make a likeness of you?”
| * Atsuk (I don’t know). May I eat the
| biscuit ?”

‘Yes, presently ; just stand over here.”
39

OLD TUGLAVI

“ Nerrilangale ” (let me eat it), and he turned his” ‘
back on me. i

« All right ; just turn round and stand still a —
moment.” a

“ Nerrilangale, ner- ri-langa-le-e- e-e”; and the
poor old man broke down into sobs and ambled off 9
home munching his precious biscuit. I was left
gazing. I never caught him again. Once or twice
I heard his shuffling step behind me, and a querulous
voice said “ I want another biscuit,” but not another |
word could I get out of Tuglavi. What I know
about him I have heard from the missionary. He is”
a famous old heathen chief. He has spent all his”
life camped among the rocks of the northern Labrador,
and nobody knows how old he is. His people have
come to the Mission station, bringing him with them ;_
they have heard from other Eskimos of the preaching
of the Word of God, and they have come to hear it ;
but Tuglavi cannot understand. His mind has failed; _
he is in his second childhood, and spends his time
in aimless wanderings and in watching whatever
there is to be seen. He manifests. an insatiable
curiosity, and gets into the Mission house as often as
he can, just for the sake of a look round. The kitchen |}
is his chief joy; European cookery is something
new to Tuglavi; and he has even been found tasting —
the contents of the cooking-pots. The missionary
good-naturedly put up with the old man’s childish
ways until he discovered him one day hanging head ~
downwards over the edge of the kitchen water-tank. ©
He seized the struggling legs and hauled their owner
into safety. Old 'Tuglavi had only been getting a
drink! Missionaries do not often lock their doors, |
for fear of inspiring mistrust, but in this case it ~

‘sSop a1 sinoqivy pur ‘J]9sI1 asnoy 9y3 s¥ Buoy sv st ‘podnos3 are uarpyiyo 943 YorqM Jnoqe ‘yorod oy], “pnw pajduesy yum
peiooy ‘seuojs puv jin} Jo yny 21331] AWOo[s & st 3] “asNoy sty St sty} pu¥ ‘pooypiIyd puodsas sty ul MoU YaryD UeYy}eeY plo Snowy z SI 1Ae[BNy,

OTD] SIAVTDAL AIO

TROUBLES OF A PHOTOGRAPHER

seemed best to keep the old man out of harm’s way
by putting on an extra latch. ‘Tuglavi soon solved
this problem. He found an old broken fork, with
only one prong, and by dint of much scratching he
managed to raise the latch and let himself in. The
_ missionary promptly forfeited the fork, whereupon
old Tuglavi, with much sobbing and lamentation,
went home to tell his woes. He presently came
back to ask for payment for the fork !

Tuglavi was still at his childish wanderings when
_ I was in Killinek, but the door was no longer locked.
Some one was on guard, ready to cheer the old man
up by the gift of some scrap or other of food, and
show him out again.

Tuglavi brought two wives with him to the
Mission station. One was very old—his lifelong
companion, in fact, and past work—almost as feeble
as the old man himself; so Tuglavi had married a
young wife as well, so as to have somebody at home
to do the work! I cannot imagine that there was
much peace in Tuglavi’s iglo.

It is not to be wondered at that superstition is
strong among these Killinek folk, so lately utterly
heathen, without knowledge of Christianity or of
civilisation. The first glimpse I had of it was in
the fear that some of them had of being photo-
graphed. ;

I chanced to meet a young man whose face was
a perfect picture of the heathen Eskimo type, and to
my delight he was willing to pose then and there for
his portrait.

I got an excellent likeness of him from the front
and then made ready for a side view. But he would

have no more. “'Tava,” he said (that is completely
4)

SUPERSTITIONS

finished). I tried to coax him. Would he have us 3
done if there were other Eskimos with him ? He
hesitated. “Imakka” (perhaps), he said. “ Then go
and fetch that group of men to stand with you.” %
Off he trotted, and I saw him palavering with the r
men. Presently he started back ; but stopped at a
fair distance and shouted “ They peanot bonis: ae
lady has their ghosts in her box,” pointing to a lady —
who was wandering on the beach with a kodak, and —
who had apparently just photographed the group. 2
Then he fled to his tent on the hillside! |
Children do not seem to mind: you may photo- |
graph them over and over again. 4
Y had glimpses, too, in my talks with Bob and
others of the people of Kuillinek, of the religious —
beliefs of the ancient Eskimo race as they were in |
the old heathen days. The idea of a good Spirit did
not enter their minds: the Spirit of their heathen |
life was ill-disposed and apt to sulk. He must be ™
appeased, lest he hinder their hunting and cast an
evil spell over them. It was an awful thing to”
approach his dwelling in the hills; only certain men _
could venture, men who understood his ways ane
knew how to ward off his wrath. And so the choser
men used to go to the gloomy heights where
Torngak seemed to dwell, taking with them offerings _
in order that his anger, ever ready to bubble over
and destroy them, might be quenched at least fora |
time. This was the Power in whom the heathen
Kskimos_ believed; a mighty WJ-will, a Being of
malice and cruelty. Verily, a hopeless creed; a
pitiful thing in comparison with the Gospel of Love |
in, whose bounty they are now sharing.

Their belief in the Spirit of the Sea is less terrible; A
42

OLD WOMAN OF THE SEA

but, none the less, they thought that the sea, too,
was governed by an ill-disposed power. ‘They spoke
of an old, old woman, whose home was at the
bottom of the sea. She sometimes used to come
up to breathe on the shores of Resolution Island.
All the living things that swim the seas were under
her control; the fish, the seals, the white bears,
obeyed her will. She too must be appeased. If
not, who knows but she might send a shark to break
| up the nets and eat the seals that are already
_ entangled in the meshes! She might tell the seals
_ to swim away, and not go near the hunting-places of
the Innuit; she might drive the white bears north-
ward, to infest the rocks of Resolution Island, where
there are no hunters; she might feed the codfish
with her own hand, and make them lie fat and
sluggish while the fisherman plied his hook and line
in vain. So she must be appeased ; and to a deep
channel in a cleft of the rocks the heathen Eskimo
would take his broken knives, his worn-out spear-
heads, bits of meat, bones—anything was better than
‘nothing—and cast them into the water for the old
woman, that she might be in a good humour.

Like all nature peoples, the heathen Eskimos
were firm believers in a life after death. Their idea
was like that of the Happy Hunting Grounds, with
the difference that the best hunting ground to
Eskimo ways} of thinking is the sea. And so they
laid the hunter on a lonely height overlooking the
‘sea. ‘The grave was just an oblong pile of stones,
for the Eskimos knew nothing of digging—the only
| soil on their land is the shallow layer scattered over
_ the hard rock. Within the pile the hunter was laid,

dressed in his best. clothes; his harpoon was placed
43

HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS

beside him, ready to his hand; and flat stones were —
laid across the top of his resting-place to keep\the —
ravaging wolves away. Ina separate little heap of —
stones at the head of his tomb his stone lamp and ©
cooking-pot were buried. }

Here and there along the coast of Labrador you —
may see those heathen graves, sometimes grouped —
into graveyards, sometimes solitary. Look in, and ©
you see the mouldering bones: the harpoon is rotten, —
and its wooden shaft is almost gone; the lamp and ~
cooking-pot are half buried in the moss. |

“Ha,” the people were wont to say, “he was a
clever hunter; he is happy now; he hunts every ©
night. See how smooth and white his bones are.
This other was lazy, he has forgotten how to hunt; ~
the moss is growing over his bones!” |

And perhaps some weird old man, with a far-
away look in his restless eyes, would say “ Yes, I
have seen them hunting: yes, I have seen their foot-
prints in the snow.”

And I turned away from Killinek content with
my visit.
I had seen a tribe of real heathen Eskimos, —

among whom the Mission has only just begun its

quiet work; I had caught a glimpse of their habits —

and their ways of thinking, of their beliefs and ~

superstitions; and I felt that I should do well to ~
look again at my neighbours at Okak, and remember ~
what they were long years ago, and study them ©
again as they are to-day. :

And so I invite you, my reader, to come with me

and see the people in their daily life and in their —

homes; read with me their character, as I have read —
At 4

LEAVING KILLINEK

it during the years that I have lived among them
and talked and travelled and camped with them.
And if, by the pages that follow, you are aroused to
an interest in their future, and in the efforts made to
save them, body and soul, then I am content.

CHAPTER III

First Siaut or Laprapor—ARRIVAL AT OKAK

T was in the month of August, in the year 1902, ©
that I first saw Labrador; and I shall never
forget the gloom that seemed to hang over the ©
desolate coast on that bleak summer morning. 4
There was a chilling mist on the water, and ©
through it I could dimly see a dull and sullen 7
coast line, and hear the ponderous thud of the sea ~
as it beat, beat, beat upon the rocky wall.
It was a dispiriting picture; and when I went
ashore and saw the stunted brushwood and the dwarfed ©
and twisted trees all dripping with moisture, and met 7
the hulking sledge-dogs, bedraggled and forlorn, ©
wandering in aimless fashion among the huts, the idea
of desolation was complete. But the next day brought ~
a different picture. The sun shone brightly on the
neat white walls of the Mission church, and on the |
moss-grown huts that strewed the hillside; brisk,
black-haired little people were running to and fro, —
bustling to help at the unloading of the ship; there ~
was an air of life and brightness about the scene. l
I caught some of the glamour of Labrador ; I saw
something of the charm of this lonely land, a charm }
that in some strange fashion makes people love it, that |
makes old residents who have left it pine to return, —
that makes even the casual visitor vow to come again. _

I walked upon the hillside in the sunshine, and |
46

FIRST SIGHT OF LABRADOR

marvelled at the wealth of wild flowers; they were
everywhere, rearing their heads among the unpro-
mising stones, and blooming in profusion amid the
thick moss that carpeted the ground. Some of them
I knew—delicate harebells, and tall foxgloves, and

humble scentless violets, and yellow dandelions—and

some were strange to me. I found when I gathered a
bunch that they soon withered: it seemed as if they
were living in a hurry ; springing up from the sodden,

_half-frozen sprinkling of soil that barely covers the

rocks, and bursting into brilliant bloom, and withering
‘away, all in the space of a summer that only lasts six

or seven weeks. Surely they were making the most

‘of their chance of living: I had hardly thought that
the land of Labrador could look so gay. The butter-
flies were flitting to and fro; the grasshoppers were
about, with their queer sudden leaps; the mice and
lemmings darted under the stones, bristling and

Squealing: it seemed such a summer land! So
different can two impressions be. But it was not this

short summer visit of mine in 1902 that gave me my
real impression of Labrador. [I rather think of the
autumn of 1908, when I came back to the land to
make my home at Okak, and to plant a hospital there
| among the Eskimos.

_ I remember the tension with which we waited for

the ery of “Land!” and I remember with what a
mighty roar the steward woke me up, and how I
| rolled over with a jerk to look through the port-
| hole:

And so I saw again the bare black rocks of
Labrador, probably two or three miles away, but
seeming no more than a stone-throw. It looked

8 poor bleak place, but any sort of land was welcome

FIRST SIGHT OF LABRADOR

after a journey across the Atlantic in a 222-tons
barque, in the teeth of what the captain a
flatteringly called head-winds, but which turned outs
to be the equinoctial gales.

I looked on the land with a strange sense of
expectancy; and then there came to me the feeling —
that has come to others, the feeling that there was
something away behind it all. It was awfully de-
pressing in itself; but to me it seemed like a veil
that might lift and disclose a vision of hope. ¥

I know that in summer the scene is brighter—
a picture of bold cliffs and headlands; of long fiords
with rocky walls all patched with white and green, ©
where the snow lies unmelted in the shade and the
scrubby brushwood flourishes in the sunshine; of
stretches of grey moss, and splodges of vivid colour |
where the wild flowers have got a hold; of distant
heights, snow-capped, sharply focussed in the clear ©
air; of blue waters dancing in the sunshine—but ~
I like to think of Labrador as I saw it on that 7
October morning; bleak and silent, lapped by a ~
leaden sea, but giving all the time that charmi g
hint of something to be sought, something to live
for. All day long we steamed past bare black rocks, :
and night fell upon the same grim scenery: this
was Labrador. :

In the morning we were at anchor off Ramah,
in a deep little harbour among the hills. The
solitary missionary was in transports of delight. “I
had almost given you up,” he said, “you are so
late” : and he went on to tell us how only the night
before he had told two men to make ready to tramp |
over the hills to Hebron, seventy miles away, to ask |
for news and stores. |

While we were chatting, two Eskimos came in;

48 t

THE SEA FRONT AT OKAK

Okak is the largest of the Eskimo villages, with a population ot more than three hundred. It
consists of sixty-five huts, most of them respectable little homes built of boards. Over the porches
meat and fish are hung in the sun to dry, out of reach of the dogs.

RAMAH

There is a great deal of beauty in some of these Eskimo villages, nestling in quiet spots among
he hills, and close to the water’s edge. In summer the ground is carpeted with moss and an
abundance of wild flowers, and the scene is an ideal one.

—————— =

EE _

ARRIVAL AT OKAK

small shock-headed men, clad in corduroy trousers
and oily blanket smocks.

Their little restless eyes gazed about with won-
derment, the while they gabbled strange words with
great volubility.

As fast as one paused for breath, the other took
up the tale, and I could not help smiling at their ob-

‘vious earnestness about something. The missionary

sat gravely listening to their speeches, occasionally
giving a laconic “ Ahaila” (yes) ; and at the end they
seemed mightily pleased, for they went out grinning,
with many a sly nudge at one another, and
* Nakomék ” (thank you) to the company generally.

Then we got the explanation. ‘Those are the
two men that I told to go to Hebron, and they have
been to ask whether they need go, now that the ship
has come. I expect there will be feasting in Ramah

| to-day, for their next question was whether they

might eat the provisions I had given them for the
journey.”

It came out later in the day that one of the men
had eaten his pork and biscuits as soon as he got
them, I suppose as a sort of foundation for his

journey. Actually on the road, he would have been

content to chew an unpromising slab of tough dried

| fish; but I think he must have felt rather relieved

when the missionary gave him permission to demolish

| the pork.

The ship did not dally in Ramah; we only

| stayed one day, because of the lateness of the season ;
| and on the morning of the 7th of November, 1903,
| we dropped our anchor in Okak Bay, in sight

of the biggest of the Eskimo villages; and there, at

the old settlement of Okak, among the = little
49

#
ARRIVAL AT OKAK |
‘

nuts that dotted the slope of the hill, and ais to
the tapering tower of the Mission church, I saw my
future home. Mt
When we went ashore there was an Eskimo wait- —
ing to hand us into the boat. He stood at the bottom i
of the gangway steps; and when I looked down on ~
his head all the pictures that I had seen of the
Eskimos, and that had seemed unreal when face
to face with the people themselves, came back ~
to me. 4
Here was an Eskimo, black-haired and shaggy- _
headed, squat and solid of figure, square shouldered —
and short necked, with small active hands and feet, |
perhaps a little more than five feet tall, but muscular
and ‘heavy of build; and when he looked up it was —
a face from the picture books that looked into mine, ~
a square smooth face with an oily-looking yellow skin ©
and ruddy patches on the cheeks; his lumpy cheek- ~
bones seemed well padded with fat his nose was a |
small flat dab; and he had a pair of restless little eyes —
that peered out of narrow slits. I handed my wife ~
down the steps, and he helped her into the boat. Hi S |
smattering of English had a quaint ring with it:
«Take care, lady, boat plenty wet—fine day, sir,”
and I shook hands with this ‘characteristic-looking
Kskimo, and thought that I should like to make his ©
closer acquaintance. My wish came true: as I look
forward over the years that I am to chronicle I see
his face many a time, sometimes smiling, sometimes ~
awkward, sometimes quarrelsome; he gave me some
tough questions to answer ; he gave me many a trying
hour; he did me many a little kindness. ‘The one
and the other were so mixed up; he was a thoroughly |

human Eskimo. Paulus and I became very good |
50

|
|
|
|
|
|
}
|
|
|
|

ARRIVAL AT OKAK

friends, such is my memory of him—and he saved
my life once; but that comes later on.
There was a keen wind blowing as the men rowed

us across from the ship to the shore, and they had
hard work to get along. ‘ Aksuse” shouted the

steersman, and the rowers bent their backs and pulled
their hardest. Every time they flagged, every time
he saw a gust of wind coming, his cry was the same
—‘ Aksuse.” Aksuse—be strong; it was the Eskimo

greeting, the same word that met us at Ramah when
_we first touched land, the “ Aksunai” of welcome

_ ———————— =
wets >

given to several at once; and I saw that the meaning
has not dropped out of it as it has out of some

greetings.

« Aksuse,” shouted the steersman; “ be strong—
put your hearts into it—do your best,” and the oars-
men obeyed with a will. What more noble greeting

| could you imagine than this old Eskimo password,

the people’s greeting through all time ?

** Aksuse,” shouted the folk as we walked along
the jetty, and we could not but feel heartened for
our task by the very sincerity of the welcome. One
man thought to go one better: he had a trifle of
English to air: he touched my wife’s arm, and held
out his hand. ‘Good evening, sir,” he said !

Ten minutes later we were walking round the
new hospital. ‘This is a matter-of-fact sort of state-
Ment, and takes but a few words in the telling;
but it sums up the result of a good many months

jof downright hard work.

Early in the year the missionary in charge at

|Okak received word that the hospital was coming.

‘Would he please make a foundation, fifty-two feet

thirty-six ?”
51

pees «a

ARRIVAL AT OKAK

I think a great many people would have been —
appalled at such a request as this, but we had a —
practical man to deal with; he simply called the ©
Kskimos together and set them to work, himself —
toiling as hard as any. They fetched stones from ~
the beach and the hillside; they sent the women
and children with boxes and buckets, to carry sand
from the patch of sandbank that peeps up at low
water; and so they built the foundation.

I wondered, as I walked round the walls, how
the corner stones had ever been put in place. They
were enormous lumps of rock, and had been raised
fully five feet off the ground without the help of
any kind of machinery. In fact, the whole feat
of building the foundation surprised me, for the ©
beach is covered with ice for nine months of the
twelve, so that the pebble gathering and sand fetching
must have been accomplished at a marvellous rate |
for the foundation to be made, and the hospital to |
be built upon it, all in the space of one short season. |

I asked the missionary about those corner stones. —

For answer he smiled an inscrutable smile. “ We
had to pull all together,” he said. It appears that |
they made a tripod of heavy tree-stems, slung a
pulley from the top, passed a thick rope over the
pulley and tied it to the stone, and then got hole
of the rope, and pulled all together! It sounded
very simple, but I looked again at those corner stones |
and wished I had been there to see the pulling. :

I understood it better during the afternoon, fo:
a strong wind began to blow, and the oarsmen were
unable to row the lighters ashore. The work oO
unloading threatened to come to a stop, and t

captain dared not delay with the Labrador winte :
52

' ESKIMO FACES

At the top right-hand corner is a young man of Kiliinek, the same who was afraid °
of having his portrait taken a second time. Below is a Killinek boy wearing the usual
**dicky ” with its fringe of dog-skin. The other two are Johannes, the author’s sledge
driver, and Tabea, Johannes’s wife, two typical Okak Eskimos.

ARRIVAL AT OKAK

treading on his heels. ‘ Ajornarpok” (it cannot be
done), said the men at the oars. ‘“ All right,” said
the captain, “get a rope—get the women—get every-
body, and let them all pull.” As soon as the word
went round there was a stampede to the jetty:

_ women came rushing out of the huts, tying bandanna

handkerchiefs over their heads to keep their hair tidy
in the wind; children raced from house to house,
gathering their friends. “Come and pull,” was the
password. |

By the time the people were ready the rope
had been tied to the lighter and passed ashore.
The mate on the ship blew his whistle; the man
in charge of the rope on the jetty waved his hand
in answer and yelled to the people. “ Atté” (get at
it), he shouted, and the people began to pull.

They tramped along the jetty, clinging to the
rope, and singing in time to the march-like beating
of their boots on the boards. “ Atté, atté,” they
cried when the pace began to slacken, and then
sang and tramped the faster. ‘There was a constant
stream up one side with the rope, and down the
other side to get a fresh hold, and as fast as the
rope came ashore the man at the end was coiling
the slack into a neat pile. A jollier lot of people
I have never seen; they sang and tramped, and
laughed and sang again, as if they had not a care
in the world; and all the while the lighter came
steadily on, rising to the waves and breaking them

down, stopping for nothing, but riding shorewards

in. I went on board the ship to watch their work,
and from the deck I could hear the sound of their
singing borne on a wind that whistled through the

rigging. This was “ poles all together,” a practical

ARRIVAL AT OKAK

illustration of the old proverb, “ Where there’s a will, ti

there’s a way ”—and that seems to be how difficulties
are overcome in Labrador.

I admired the charming simplicity of our mission- .

ary at Okak; nothing seemed to daunt him, and he

evidently thought the work of making a foundation —

a very small thing.

“You will have to build a bridge over the brook

in the springtime,” he said, ‘‘ the path to the hospital

is too narrow”’—and there I was, face to face with —
my first building problem, thinking to myself that —
I must catch the Labrador courage and be ready ~
for whatever should come, and inwardly praying for
the spirit that dwelt in those first old missionaries —

and that dwells in their followers to-day.

CHAPTER IV

Tue FreeziInGc oF THE SEA—SEALSKIN CLOTHES AND Boots—
Winter Cotp—Tue Home-Comina.

N the morning of the 10th of November the
Harmony was gone, and big and bare the

bay looked without the familiar black hull and
spidery rigging. It was impossible to avoid feeling

just a touch of the loneliness of Labrador on that

raw morning, but there was work to be done, and

the constant round of duties proved an ideal .cure.

When a man is busy making and painting and
furnishing a home, unpacking a two years’ supply

of all imaginable necessaries, and at the same time
wrestling with a new language and making acquaint-
ance with a strange people, time cannot drag; and

I found that the days simply melted away.
The village seemed to have suddenly emptied,

for more than half the houses were boarded up

and deserted; and I was told that the people had
gone back to their autumn seal-hunting, which they

had left when the Harmony came. As I took my

daily walks upon the hills the cold struck dismal
indeed. The land was all covered with hard snow,
and the beach was crusted with a coating of ice
that crackled and boomed as the tides lifted it and
left it. The sea had a queer haze hanging over
it; it looked exactly as if the water were getting
ready to boil, and the vapour was gently drifting

with the wind. “Ah,” said the people, ‘the sea

THE FREEZING OF THE SEA.

will soon freeze; it is smoking already. That is —
always a sign that the ice will soon cover it.” |
Day by day I watched the “smoke,” but the |

wind kept the water constantly tossing, and gave }

it no chance to set. It was not until the 27th of
November that a calm night came, and when I

looked out of my window at bed-time the water |

had a muddy surface in the clear moonshine; and
in the morning there was ice. |
It seemed strange to look over a great grey plain
instead of the white-capped waves; there seemed ~
to be something wanting; and it was some time ~
before I found out that the silence was bothering ~
me. We had got so used to the rustle of the tides’
upon the beach, and the murmur of the waves upon ©
the bay, that the utter stillness was painful. I think
it was my first experience of perfect silence: even
in the quietest part of England there is always some ~
sound, near or distant; but as I rambled on the |
hills that afternoon the feeling was quite eerie.
There was not a breath of wind; I seemed to be
alone in a frozen world; and I felt really glad when ~
a dog began to yelp somewhere in the village,
perhaps a mile away, and my ears at last got some- — |
thing to occupy them. . |
All the morning the new ice was deserted ; there _
were children playing near the edge, but they seemed _
afraid to venture far, and nobody took any notice ~
of them. It was not until midday that the grown-
ups took any interest in things, and then I saw ©
an old man go hobbling over the beach with a stick. —
With proper Eskimo dignity and deliberation
he inspected the ice and prodded it; then he walked

on it, at first feeling his way cautiously, but soon
56 :

THE FREEZING OF THE SEA

more boldly, and came back to say “ Piovok” (it is
good). He had done his duty, which was to test
the new ice, for the people have great faith in their
old men as judges of ice and weather. As soon as
the children heard ‘‘ Piovok” they gave a scream
of delight, and went racing over the bay—perhaps

freed from the shadow of a thrashing that had

hovered over them as long as the ice was dangerous
—and spent the rest of the day romping and playing
“tig” and “sledges” without a fear in the world,

-and as if there were no such thing as nine or ten

EE EEE ee

fathoms of icy water under them. I took a very
short and cautious walk on the ice that first day,
but I cannot say that I enjoyed it—it was too nerve-
racking by half. The surface had a queer elastic
feel and gave way under my feet, like walking on

cushions (such was the sensation), and swayed so

horribly that I was glad to get off it. On the next
day I tried a little skating on it, and thought to

‘myself that nowhere in the world could there be
such a place for skating as Labrador, with its

hundreds of miles of tough grey ice and its sheltered
channels and Norway-like scenery. But I was mis-
taken about the skating. No enterprising syndicate
will ever exploit the North Atlantic Ocean as a
skating rink, for on the third day the surface was
slushy—the salt was working out; and on the day

after that there was a snowstorm which covered the

ice a couple of feet deep with hard waves and ridges
of snow, and not all the sweeping in the world could
have brought the skating back again.

Three days was the most of skating that evér

| I got in one season all the time I was in Labrador.

With the freezing of the sea the Labrador winter
57

SEALSKIN CLOTHES AND BOOTS

begins, and I hope that every new comer has the |
same good advice that I received from my friend —
the Serre Be wise in time: wear Eskimo
clothes.” . I had done my little bit of skating in my
English boots, but they had long since proved too
cold for my walks on the hills, and the change to
native clothes and boots was a welcome one. Mr.
Simon said that he would arrange things for me;
accordingly the village “ tailor,” a square-faced, brisk a
little Eskimo woman, came in one day like a minia-_
ture hurricane. iy
There was no awe, no aloofness about her—she —
had made clothes for too many successive mission-
aries to feel anything but business-like; so she stood
me up, and looked at me, and measured me with |
her arms, and bolted out satisfied. “A _ bit taller
than my husband, and not so fat”—was her com-
ment; and the outcome of it all was that after a |
few days she turned up again with a big bundle, ©
and I found myself the possessor of a “dicky” |
(blanket smock) and a complete suit of sealskins just ©

like those the Eskimos wear, and all for the outlay
of a modest sum in return for the good woman’s |
excellent needlework. Meanwhile I had got several”
women to work at making boots. Their method
of measuring was much the same as Juliana the ~
tailor’s: they came in, gazed at my feet, and went
out! I was quite unable to see the sense in this,
so I laboriously made paper patterns with the aid
of the store-keeper and his stock of boots. I gave ze
them to the next woman who came to measure me |
for boots, and she accepted them with a smile—
but the boots she made from them were either —
too big or too small, and desperately ugly. I confess —
58 €

SEALSKIN CLOTHES AND BOOTS

that I always got a decent fit when I let the women
do the work in their own way, and Juliana explained
it easily enough. ‘‘Some women,” she said, “take
up more in the sewing than others, and some are
not used to patterns. Now I will make you some
good boots”; and without pattern or measure, or
anything else beyond her bare word, away she trotted,
and in a few days brought me the best pair of boots
|l ever had. The long and short of it is that boot-
making is an art, and the women take it seriously.
Whenever I went into an Eskimo house I found
the women and girls chewing something. I imagined
at first that they were eating, or chewing reindeer
ears (which they cut up into a sort of native chewing
gum); but no, they were softening the edges of
she boot-leather for the needle. An Eskimo boot
s made in only three pieces—the legging, the tongue
or instep, and the turned-up, trough-like sole: the
bootmaker cuts them out, and hands them round to
be chewed. Eskimo teeth are made for the chewing ;
hey meet edge to edge instead of overlapping as
do; and the chewing of the boot-leather is
woman’s work from one end of life to the other.
Little children who have hardly cut their teeth,
old women who are too feeble and blind to do any-
hing else, sit mumbling and chewing; chewing on
hrough life until they can chew no more, or until
hey have to say, as an old woman once said to me,
*I can no longer chew: my teeth are worn away:
Lam old.” And so, through the (to me) mysterious
processes of measuring and chewing and sewing, I
zot my Eskimo boots.
And with the freezing of the sea there begina

00, the real Labrador cold—not the bleak, biting
59

WINTER COLD

cold of autumn, when the wind blows from the east |
over the freezing sea, but the grim cold of winter. |)
Oddly enough, it does not feel so very cold; it is ¢
dry air, coming from the trackless desert of the in-_
terior of Labrador, bracing and keen, and lacking”
some of the sting of the sea wind; but night by
night my minimum thermometer sank lower, until,”
towards the end of January, it could go no further, |
and the indicator used to stick each night at min
forty. It is the little things one does not think of
that show best the power of the winter cold.
One learns to watch one’s neighbour’s nose on the
daily walk; lips stiffen with icicles; hands cannot |
bear to be without gloves fora moment. Our sitting-
room was rather stuffy one day, after a visit from a”
merry crowd of Eskimos, so I opened the windo
for fresh air. In a twinkling the pictures on the}
walls were covered with frost, and the plants on th
side table—my wife’s own pet little hobby—drooped —
their heads with one accord and died. I shut t
double window with a slam, but it was too late; th
plants were dead, and tears began to run down the
faces of the pictures. That was my first lesson abo :
King Frost in his own country !
There was a little pantry built next to our kitchen
a tiny room with a felt padded door and a huge brie
stove, and there we stored the potatoes and eggs an
other things that must not freeze. .
On the windy nights I used to make a chilly
pilgrimage at one or two o'clock to fill up the stov
and save the potatoes. :
And ours was a warm house, built of boards an
felt in alternate layers. Labrador is a cold place—

colder than folks realise. I have heard that in thi
60 :

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dWVD ONIHSIY VW

WINTER COLD

old days, when the houses were not so good as they
are now, the missionaries have had to take turns to
sit up all night and keep the vegetables from freezing.
It strikes me as a new light on a missionary’s life :
one pictures him sitting up to comfort and relieve the

suffering, but one does not realise that in the in-

terests of his own health in the grim land that he has

| chosen to serve he must, perforce, sit up and nurse

the potatoes.
So much for the winter cold—it is a very vivid

|memory tome. Early in December the Okak brook
| was frozen solid, and the people, instead of fetching

water, came with hatchets and buckets and carried
away lumps of broken ice to thaw. One little girl
used to come every day with a sack on a little sledge,
and drag it home filled with the smaller bits that
other people had pushed aside: it seemed a strange
idea—the family’s drinking water kept in a sack. As

for ourselves, we were rather more squeamish than

the Eskimos, who took no notice of the fact that the
dogs were constantly trampling their chopping-place
on the brook ; we sent a couple of men, with an iron
tank on a sledge and twenty dogs to pull it, across
the bay to the big river. They reached water by
jabbing a hole in the ice with a t6k— a sort of enor-
mous chisel with a six-foot handle—and ladled it out
with a tin mug. By February the ice on the river
was eight feet thick, and they had to make a pit with
steps up the side: one man stopped in the pit, and

lJadled the water into buckets, while the other man

carried the buckets up the steps and emptied them

into the tank. So we got our water. The men

were able to bring about two hundred gallons

at a load, and they meg” it their duty to keep the
1

THE HOME-COMING

Mission house and hospital supplied all through the
winter. | :
Another effect of the freezing of the sea was that
the people began to make their way home to th
village. All day long some one or other was on the”
watch, and the cry of “ Kemmutsit” (a sledge) brought
every able-bodied person tumbling out of doors to.
greet the new arrivals. Some of the travellers had’
only come a mile or two, and the dogs trotted up
their well-known homes all fresh and frisky ; others
had been on the road most of the day, and their dogs
were footsore and worn out; it was their first time”
in harness after the summer and autumn of idleness,
and they panted and struggled and whined with)
weariness, though a few weeks later the same dogs”
would be doing sixty or seventy miles at a stretch”
without any trouble. |
Kvery new comer had the same question to
answer—*“ Flow many seals have you caught?” ‘That
was the measure of a man’s greatness for the time
being; and it was amusing to see some of them
swaggering about because they had got twice as
many seals as last year. One man had seventy-
seven, a truly splendid catch; and this, compared
with the average of fifteen or so that usually came ©
his way, was enough to turn his head, and set him
bragging of his skill, and of the marvellous things ©
he would do with his wealth. I remember hearing
that one of his ambitions was to lay in a stock of ©
tinned mutton, so that he could feed on a higher ©
plane than his neighbours, who must, perforce, be
satisfied with seal meat. :
By the middle of December the village looked

fairly busy, and instead of a mere handful of work-
62

THE HOME-COMING

people straggling down the various paths to the church
when the bell rang, each meeting-time brought a
bustling crowd hurrying along; and instead of the
half-empty church, chill and bare, there was the
pleasant warmth of a crackling stove, and the cheer-
ful sight of scores upon scores of brown faces shining
with good feeding, and bright eyes twinkling with
pleasure. ‘Home for Christmas ” was the uppermost
thought in everybody’s mind; and day by day the
sledges came, and the excitement grew and grew,
to culminate on Christmas Eve, when the last belated
stragglers hove in sight, and when with a roar of
« Tikkiput—kemmutsi-i-1-t” (they are come—the
sledges), the whole population of the village went
racing over the ice to meet the last comers and
hurry them homewards. Not only boys and girls,
but staid and stolid fathers of families, mothers
\with sleeping babies in their hoods, grim old grand-
mothers and ancient white-haired veterans, joined
n the rushing, shouting crowd, careering at their
best pace—and a remarkably fast pace, too—over
the slippery sledge track. Sometimes those last
sledges had been in difficulties on the way. I
lave seen men come home with their legs encased
jm ice, showing that on some treacherous place
they had slipped through into the sea, and had
bnly saved themselves by clutching at the sledge;
f’md once a sad-eyed party reached the village,
with a mother sobbing over the loss of her little
pil, who had tumbled into the black water and
peen lost when the sledge gave a sudden lurch
As the ice broke under it. But “home for Christ-
mas” is the great idea: the Eskimos will run a

ittle risk rather than be late, though, happily, the
63

THE HOME-COMING

ice is firm in most years before the middle of
December. |
And making ready for Christmas was the great
occupation in every household. A good deal of
decorating seemed to be going on, for the storekeeper
was evidently doing a brisk trade in wall papers, and
people were constantly coming to me for illustrated
magazines to eke out ; in fact, I found that some of
the poorer ones had their walls completely pasted over
with pages torn from various weeklies and monthlies.
I, being an Englishman, was often asked to explain
the pictures, and hard work I sometimes found it. |
«‘ Are there really animals like these in the forests of |
England?” said one innocent old man, as he pointec
an oily and tobacco-stained thumb at a page of)
political cartoons—birds and dogs and lions, adorned”
with the faces of parliamentary personalities. I did
my best, but he could not see the humour in the™
idea. ‘There is no sense in it,” he said; “if they do)
not exist, why should there be pictures of them ? ”
Every house had its Christmas tree, and sometime:
more than one. Big Julius, who is the proud father
of a family of plump daughters, had a tree for each o
the girls, to say nothing of a special little tree at the)
foot of the grandmother’s bed—to the huge delight o
the old lady. It is no great trouble to get a Christ
mas tree; it can be brought home on the top of a loa
of firewood, for the spruce fir, which looks exactly”
like the Christmas tree of all our picture books, is or
of the few trees that grow in Labrador. The mos
northerly trees that I know on the coast are a little
forest of these firs at the head of Nappartok Bay, forty”
miles north of Okak. No Eskimo thinks it a hard=

ship to run twenty miles or so with his sledge and
64 . 4

THE HOME-COMING

dogs to find a specially neat little tree in some

sheltered hollow of the hills: if he has not the incli-

nation to go so far afield, he probably brings home a

bundle of spare branches and fastens them into bare

places on the tree he has chosen—because trees that
grow in exposed places have all their branches on the
south side.

In the evenings I used to hear the bandsmen
practising Christmas music. Samuel, the performer
on the tenor horn, lived in a little hut not ten yards
from my window, and there he sat, hour after hour,
making the walls rattle with the most weird and
awful hootings ; and just behind us was the cooper’s
house, where Solomon, the cooper’s growing lad,
was taking first lessons on the cornet, and setting all
the village dogs a-howling in the moonlight.

The people were home for Christmas—and home,

|to the Eskimo, is his wooden house at the Mission
| village.

65 E

CHAPTER V

LittLe JonN—Poor Akpik AND THE CUSTOM oF THE PEOPLE

ALKING along the winding and slippery
path that runs between the houses and the —
beach, in the congenial company of my friend the
missionary, we came upon a group of men bending |
over an upturned sledge. ‘“ Hello, John,” said the”
missionary. |
From the middle of the group there came a gruff
little voice; it gave the proper Eskimo arching
‘* Aksunai,” it said. i)
“Have you just got home?”
“No,” said the voice, “ I got home yesterday.”
“Indeed ; I didn’t see you—mikkimut, immakka ~
(because you are so small, maybe).” |
There was a roar of laughter at this witticism,
and out of the midst of the group a small, shock-
headed man pushed his way. |
His little eyes were twinkling with merriment,
his shaggy face was beaming, and his plump little
hand was held out for a shake. |
He seemed to be enjoying the joke as well as |
anybody, and he gripped my hand and wrung it, and ~
shouted ‘“ Aksunai, aksunai,” and laughed and _
chuckled in delight. I thought as I looked into his
eyes, “ Here is the smallest Eskimo that I have seen:” |
most of the Eskimos are small as inches go, though

broad and bulky, but here was a veritable pigmy, a
66

‘LITTLE JOHN

well-built man with brawny muscles, but standing
but an inch or two over four feet.

That was my first meeting with little John.

A day or two later I was along the village with a
camera, when the same gruff voice hailed me from
the roof of a house.

Hai,” it said; “is that the thing that makes

pictures ?”

«“ Yes,” said I, and looked around for the owner

of the voice.

There he was, perched upon the roof of one of the
biggest houses, armed with a hammer and a bundle
of shingles for mending leaky places. ‘“ Aksunai,
John,” said I.

«« Ahaila,’ answered John; “has it got its habits
with it ?”

“ Habits” (piusingit) I took to refer to the plates
which are necessary for the making of a picture, and
John’s word, which means “the usual things ”—as I
found later by digging into the dictionary in which
one of the old missionaries has recorded his success in
translating ideas into a form understandable to the
Eskimo mind—was quite a proper one under the
circumstances.

_ Yes,” said I, “it has still a habit unused.”

John began to clamber down from his roof.

**Can it make pictures inside a house ?”’

** Illale (of course).”

“Then come and make a picture in my house” ;

jand he led the way among the snarling sledge dogs
|that snoozed in the porch, and flung the door open

for me crying “ Itterit, itterit (go in, go in); Katli,

\Kaivoguk (we are both coming, Katli).”

John was all bustle, afraid that the camera might
67 |

LITTLE JOHN

‘open its eye” before he was ready; and whilst I :

was fixing the machine among the flour barrels and —
dog’s harness and half-thawed seals that littered my ¥
end of the house, John, at his end, was urging Katli
and the children to greater speed in their hurried
tidyings-up and changing of garments. He flung off
his work-stained dicky and sat down in all the glory
of shirt sleeves, breathing hard in his excitement,
and called “ ’'Taimak !” (ready) before Katli had fairly
fastened her blouse or tied the baby’s cap-strings.
Poor Katli was flurried, and with good cause: it is
no small thing for an Eskimo woman to be asked to
leave her domestic duties and pose for her portrait at 7}
a moment’s notice, and as the average woman attends
to her domestic duties clad only in blanket trousers
and shirt, and the duties themselves are not so much }
cooking and baking—very little of either, as a matter”
of fact—but rather the scraping of oily sealskins and ~
the sewing of boots, it is no matter for wonder tha
Katli had a brisk few minutes of sweeping skins and,
boards and pots on one side, and piling discarded }
work-a-day clothes behind the little boy, where sh
hoped they would be out of sight. All the same, the
picture is fairly characteristic of a modern Eskimo”

home. 4
I could not help noticing the two clocks tickin
side by side upon the wall. I asked John, “* Why do |
you have two clocks that tell different times?” Now
John’s answer was a thoroughly Eskimo one, and
delivered with real Eskimo gravity and slowness of
utterance. ‘“ Last autumn,” said John, “I did very
well at the seal hunt. I got sixty seals and seven
and some of them were ugjuks (big seals). With se
many seals I could pay all my debts and buy many |
68 %

arte ——s
SR: et ee =

LITTLE JOHN

things that were needful. ‘The missionary says that
we ought to prepare for the winter, so I got a whole
barrel of flour and a sack of ship’s biscuits, and we
shall always have bread or biscuits to eat with the
seal meat. ‘There is plenty of seal meat, but ship’s
biscuit makes it taste better, and I like it and the
children like it too—and Katli, too. I bought a new
coat, and I will wear it on Christmas Day; and
Katli bought a new black dress, and the children all
have new blanket dickys for the cold weather; and
I bought a new lamp, and it hangs over the table so
that we can read in the evenings, and I have a
bundle of wooden shingles to mend the roof, and a
pair of new iron runners for my sledge. And still
I had a little money left. I thought I should like
a new clock, and Katli said she would like a clock,
too; so we each went to the store and bought a
clock. Ahaila, the clocks don’t keep quite the same

| time—but it doesn’t matter, for the church bell rings

for the work-people at nine and twelve and a quarter
to five, and we can always tell the proper time by

that.”

And John’s face was grave and earnest as he told
me the story of the clocks, and I thought to myself,
“These simple folk are just big children.” And in a
sense my thought is justified; but it seems to me
that though the Eskimo is just a big child in his

outlook on the wider world beyond his little Labra-

dor, in the things of his own daily life he is a full-
grown man. In the grim task of wresting a living
from his stern surroundings the Eskimo excels; but
apart from this purely material side of his life, there

| are things in his nature—instinctive Eskimo customs
|—that one is bound to admire. It was in John’s

LITTLE JOHN

house that I caught a glimpse of one of the customs —
of the people. 3
I happened to turn into the house to speak to —
little John about some piece of work or other, and —
found the family at dinner. They all began to rise
shyly from their places, but John and I are good
friends, and after a little argument they all sat down
again and allowed me to sit on a box by the wall
and do my talking while they ate. They would
have been far better pleased if I had joined them at
their food, but no amount of tasting and trying has_
ever reconciled me to the fishy flavour of seal meat, —
and they knew it. As John sagely remarked, “ You
Kablunaks (Europeans) have different mouths from
ours.” a
It was a queer dinner-party. The table was
pushed into the corner, and littered as usual with |
clothes and books and relics of work hastily laid
aside, and dinner was spread on the floor. “ Laying
the table for dinner” was an unheard-of thing in
John’s household, though there are Eskimos who
have arrived at the dignity of knives and forks and
a table-cloth. John’s family was dining in proper
Kskimo style, and on proper Eskimo food, too. The
centre of the feast was an enormous iron pot, heaped
with lumps and slabs and ribs and joints of raw seal
meat, a repulsive-looking pile, only partly thawed
and well bedewed with oil.
Round the pot the family squatted, every one,
excepting only the baby, armed with a business-like ~
knife. Katli had a half-moon-shaped leather knife
that she had been using for the boots; John himself
unhitched a formidable butcher knife from his belt,
and the others had claspknives or penknives or any
0

ee ee ee eee ee

POOR AKPIK

other sort of knives that they could lay hands on.
As to the dinner, they all helped themselves, cutting
off pieces or gnawing at bones, munching and
chewing and rolling the juicy meat about in their
mouths, and smacking their lips with relish. Now
and again Katli found some specially succulent
morsel and gave it to one of the smaller children;
and the baby which one of the visitors had in her
hood was tussling with a bone, cutting its teeth and
educating its little Eskimo palate at the same time.
There were several neighbours and friends in the
circle, and the meal proceeded briskly without much
talking. So busy were they all that perhaps I was
the only one to notice a slow, shuffling step passing
the window. The footsteps turned into the porch,
and I heard the dogs yelping as somebody cleared
them out of the way. A groping hand felt for the
latch, and the door silently opened. A voice said
*« Aksuse”’ (be strong, all of you), and poor Akpik
came in, choking and coughing at the sudden warmth.
_Nobody seemed to take much notice, excepting that
John gave a laconic “ Ah” in answer to the greeting,
and the circle widened to make room for the new
comer. Akpik sat down and pulled a knife out of
“his belt, and I watched him pityingly as he sat
helping himself with lean and shaking fingers to the
tenderest portions of the meat. It was not long
before he was satisfied, for he was sadly listless and
weary, and with a simple “ Nakomék” he wiped his
_knife upon his trouser leg and slowly made his way
out again. Again nobody took much notice; John

said “ Ah,” and Akpik shut the door after him.
I was mystified by this strange little drama, and

I suppose that I showed my wonder in my face, for
71

POOR AKPIK

John answered the question that was in my thoughts ~
just as if I had asked it. | |

“We all know Akpik,” he said; “he is a poor —
young man who cannot hunt or work for himself,
and we know that he cannot work because he is ill.
I did not invite him to come, but he is quite
welcome. Among the people, no poor man will |
lack for a meal as long as there is food. It is a ||
custom of the people.”

And John, having given his explanation, thought
no more about it; he was following the custom of ©
the people, and took no credit to himself. Any
other Eskimo would have done the same. |

Little John is what is known as a clever
hunter—that is, he always meets with more than
the average success. For this reason he is much
respected by the people, in spite of his small size.
I took the trouble to look into the cause of his
success, and found that it was partly a matter of ~
heredity. His father was a clever hunter in his
day. Partly it is owing to John’s infinite—or very
great — capacity for taking pains. John always
catches more trout than anybody else, but he takes”
a corresponding amount of trouble over his net; he
never lets a tear stand unmended, and he is on the
watch to clear away bits of floating seaweed all day
long. He seems to hit more seals and reindeer with
his gun than most of the men, but then he leaves”
nothing to chance; his gun is always clean, his
sledge is ever in repair, and, thanks to his good
Katli, his skin canoe is never leaky. .

The last time I heard of little John he was
within an ace of becoming famous, but the printer

withheld his name, so he continues to live his simple _
72

THE CUSTOM OF THE PEOPLE

life unspoilt. It was in a halfpenny paper that I
'read about him, for there was a little paragraph at
the bottom of the column, informing the world that
the Labrador coast had been visited by a terrible
storm, and that two Eskimos had been rescued from
a capsized boat in an exhausted condition.

It was little John who rescued them, but the
printer did not know that. I remember that storm
very well.
| It was one of those calm, dull mornings that
sometimes come, even in Labrador, when the still
and heavy air seems to bring a feeling of gloom and
apprehension with it. Some of the shrewder heads
among the Eskimos prophesied bad weather, and
when, towards noon, queer warm gusts of air came
Sweeping past, even the most ordinary man could
tell that a storm was brewing. ' But the codfish were
biting well, and it is easy to understand that with
the end of the season so near—for it was September
already—the fishers wanted to make the very most
of every opportunity. The bay was dotted with
boats, from the line of rocks a hundred yards from
the solid little jetty right away to the open sea that
stretches to the foot of Cape Mugford, and in every
boat sat one or two men, jigging for codfish. They
were wearing gloves of black sealskin boot-leather
to keep the line from chafing their hands, and they
were pulling the fish out of the water as fast as
hands could work. The jigger is a bright piece of
lead shaped like a little fish, and armed with two
barbed hooks, and there was no need to do the
patient jerk-jerk-jerk of the arm that the Eskimos
will do, if need be, for hours at a stretch; no, as
they told me afterwards, ‘‘ Plenty, plenty fish, dggak
. 73

ia? —
MND ee ek. :

THE CUSTOM OF THE PEOPLE

(codfish) try to swallow jigger before him at th 21
bottom—very fine.” a
They stayed on the water until the last possibl a
moment, but they are a wary folk, and as the spray
came whipping along with the rising wind they took
warning, and headed for the shore. i
They were none too soon, some of them; they
had barely time to drag their boats out of reach
of the sea before the wind was howling and the
waves were crashing furiously on the rocks.
Round the bend, just outside the mouth of the
bay, two men were sitting in their boat absorbed |
in their fishing. They had misjudged the signs of |
the coming gale, and it burst upon them while the ys
were still far from shore. They pulled and tugged |
and strained at their oars, striving all they knew tc
reach shelter, but it was hopeless. It takes a lot to.
frighten an Eskimo fisherman; I believe there are no
finer boatmen in the world; but those two fellows
thought their time had come. They do not remember
much about it; all they know is that they found
themselves in the water, clinging to the keel of theit
boat, and staring at each other across it. They
could not speak, for the waves were constantly
rolling the boat so as to dip first one and then t e
other under the water, or crashing over and half
stunning them ; the roar of the gale was in their ears,
and they saw glimpses of the rocks slipping past ¢
the wind drove them towards the open sea; withou
much real hope they clung on until their poo
cramped fingers began to slip off the slimy wood ; they |
made a last despairing effort to shout. Then, while |
all seemed dark and misty, and the sound of the }
storm was drowsy and far away, they were seizec |
74

|
|
|
.
|
|
|

.
.

|
}
}

‘
i

THE CUSTOM OF THE PEOPLE

| and bundled roughly into a boat, and that is as

much as they can tell. But from Katli I gathered
that they had been drifting past a little island where
John had pitched his fishing tent. He was safe
enough, sensible little man: his boat was in a
sheltered cove, and he was enjoying a pipe while
the storm thundered at the walls of his calico home.
* Jan,” said Katli, “ nala, nala (listen)—inuk (a man)” ;
and John ran out in time to see the upturned boat
come drifting down. He saw the hands clutching
the keel; he heard the faint voices hoarsely calling ;
he raced to his boat. There was no time to lose,
no time for thinking; in another minute the wreck
would have drifted past and rescue would be out

of the question. He neither paused nor thought,

he did what lay before him; with a rag of sail, and
a long oar stuck out astern to scull and steer, he
pushed out into the storm. He ran his boat against
the wreck, and as they raced together before the
storm he leaned over and hauled the worn-out pair
aboard, and in less time than it takes to tell he had
swept his boat between the rocks into safety,
I know little John; I have studied him from
all sides, and I know that he is a true Eskimo; he
will not brag about that day. I tell you that, if
you ask him about it, he will take his pipe out of
his mouth and look at you with a puzzled sort of
face that seems to say, “‘What do you mean? I
cannot tell you anything”—and then he will turn
to his smoking again.

And I tell you that he—aye, and many another
Kiskimo—would do the same again, any day. ;

CHAPTER VI

An Eskimo Weppinc—Home Lire—Tue Eskimo Basy

NE evening, at the close of the usual meeting

in church, the missionary announced “ Kaupat
kattititsikarniarpok,” which means “To-morrow there”
will be a wedding”—literally “a tying together.”
This laconic announcement was all the notice
needed, for Labrador knows no such things as”
publishing of banns and formal engagements; every-
thing was duly arranged, and I looked forward with”
a good deal of interest to seeing a real Eskimo
wedding.

In the old heathen days the young man had to ™
buy his wife: he offered so many seals to his pro-
spective father-in-law, or rather his parents made the —
offer on his behalf, and if it seemed good enough th 2 |
bargain was struck, and the delighted bridegroo ny |
led his purchase home. Nowadays a wedding is a
solemn religious service in the presence of the
people. |

Young Peter looks about him when his twentieth —
birthday is past, and finds that he has rather a fancy —
for Klara up the hill at Isaak’s house. Perhaps —
her good looks have caught his eye; perhaps he |
knows that she is clever at splitting the fish and
cutting up the seal meat for drying—which is about —
the same as saying that she is a good cook; but
almost certainly he has satisfied himself on the most

important point of all, that she is a good boot-—
76 a

AN ESKIMO WEDDING

maker! If she can dress the sealskins nicely and
sew neat, water-tight boots her husband will be a
happy man, always dryshod for his hunting, never
without nice supple boots to slip on at a moment’s
notice, and likely to have a few spare pairs to sell
to the schooner men, who are glad to pay a couple
of dollars a pair for really good ones. So Peter
makes up his mind on the all-important question.
He goes to the missionary and states his case; or,
if he is very bashful, his parents go with him or
even instead of him. The missionary gravely nods
his head, and sends for Klara’s father and mother.
Are they inclined to let their daughter marry young
| Peter? Perhaps it is “ Yes”: they know Peter to be
a handy lad and a smart hunter, and likely to make
a good husband.

If they say “ No,” there is no need for Peter to
pine. He has other names on the list: Ruth or
Rebekah, or whoever it may be, will do just as
well: and if there is no just impediment to hinder
the match, a wedding is arranged, and the missionary
announces it for the first convenient day.

So on that winter morning I hurried on with
my work, and managed to get across to church
when the bell clanged at eleven o'clock. I found
the place nearly full: certainly all the women were
there, and most of the men had snatched an hour
from their wood-cutting or had stayed at home from
their hunting so as to be in at the ceremony.

Punctually to the minute the missionary came
in from the vestry, followed by the young man
and his chosen lady. The couple perched them-
selves side by side on two stools set ready in the
centre aisle, in full = ot the people. They did

AN ESKIMO WEDDING

not seem particularly bashful; the young man
grinned rather sheepishly as he came in, but the
girl was quite at her ease from start to finish, and ©
the two of them sat on their stools very solemn
and sedate. We started with a hymn and prayer;
then came a sermon of fifteen or twenty minutes —
duration, pointedly addressed to the parties on the
stools; after that the actual wedding ceremony.
It was simplicity itself; no ring, no best man, no
bridesmaids, no giving away. ‘The missionary stood
in front of the couple, and asked them the usual
questions; then he joined their hands and pro- ~
claimed them man and wife. a

After a short prayer and a hymn they adjourned —
to the vestry to sign the register, accompanied by —
two grave-faced elders who were to act as witnesses. |
That register is a curiosity; page after page of
Eskimo names in sprawling handwriting, with here”
and there, at long intervals, a couple of European”
names to signalise the marriage of one of the mission-
aries. ‘This serious and weighty matter of signing
the register took quite a time, and the village had”
got back into the swing of work before the newly-
married couple came out. I watched them from my —
window. The young man plodded stolidly ahead, ©
stuffing tobacco into his pipe as he went, and the |
bride did her best to keep up with him. She lifted
her skirt to hurry ; she planted her feet in the deep
pits her lord and master was making as he trudged |
through the soft snow; she did her best, but she
lagged. @
He never turned his head. It did not seem to
strike him to offer her his arm; the custom of the —

people was for the bride to follow, and she followed. Fi
78 As

HOME LIFE

How easily one might misjudge the Eskimos
from little scenes like that! He did not seem to care ?
Ay, but he cared. He proved to be a model husband,

affectionate, kind, and faithful, and a smart hunter
withal, well able to keep his little household in
proper Eskimo plenty. ‘They had a little wooden
cabin of their own, and ,lived as happy as a pair of
humming birds. But in public he must be the
“boss.” The eyes of the village were upon him
that morning, and he had to maintain his dignity.

I thought to myself as I watched that couple
tramping up the hill to their hut that the very fact
that they had a home of their own meant a great
step forward from the days of heathenism.

To have a house of his own is the ambition that
fires every young Eskimo on matrimony bent, and I
could not help contrasting the life in our little village
of Okak with the life among the wanderers of the
north, who think nothing of crowding two or even
three families into a tiny skin tent, and whose sole
Jambitions are to see good hunting and to have a
\shelter from the weather.

I have known it happen in Okak that a young
fellow. acting as servant or assistant to one of the
richer hunters has been absorbed into his master’s
family by marrying one of the daughters, and the
young couple have been accommodated with a corner
or a room; but when a young man’s fancy has soared
as high as marriage it nearly always continues to soar
until he has a home of his own.

It may be only a mean little shack, built of rough
tree stems and floored with packing cases; but visit
that home, and you see at once by the proud smile

on the young folks’ faces that an Eskimo’s house is
79

HOME LIFE

his castle. And there they live in their little wooden -
hut, until mere ambition—or the number of the little ©
toddlers—prompts the young father to tack a wing |
on to his house, or to pull it down and build it again”
on a larger scale. |
There is never a home without children. The
birth-rate is high, and most mothers have a family
of ten or twelve. 4
If no children are born to a home, or if, as some-
times happens with the terribly high infant mortality”
that prevails among the Eskimos, the little ones die
off as soon as they arrive, that home need not remai
childless. An Eskimo orphan never wants for foster-_
parents. In so small a nation blood relationships’
are close, and intermarriage has made “ cousin” a_
bewildering term. That means that an orphan)
always has relatives of some sort willing to adopt it ;
and in the odd case of a child being stranded without)
kin, as sometimes happens when people have come,
to the stations from distant tribes, the hospitable”
Eskimo nature comes into play, and some couple
comes forward with the offer of a home. «i
Adoptions are very common. Sometimes families)
simply exchange a child or two; generally somebody
wanting a boy hands over a superfluous girl ir
exchange; but this does not always end satisfactorily.
It is all very well while the children are little, bu
when they get into their teens the boy’s father
sees a good useful lad working for foster-parents,,
and he wants him back. The foster-parents very)
naturally object: they have had the trouble and ex
pense of rearing the boy, and are beginning to look,
for some return. So the quarrel begins. Relatives)
on both sides are i in to palaver; the head!

THE ESKIMO BABY

men of the village are fetched to smooth things down
or to add counsel to the confusion; and finally the
missionary is consulted, and the dispute is settled.
Who would not be an Eskimo baby? The very
first nest it goes into is a charming bag of baby-rein-
deer skin, with the fur inside, soft and warm; and
there the baby sleeps, safe from all draughts and
chills and cold toes. Hung on the wall, or propped
against the end of the bed, the bag looks like a giant
watch-pocket ; indeed, one good Eskimo housewife
must have been struck by the likeness herself, for
she brought me a miniature one when I left Labrador,
and told me that it would do to keep my watch from
getting sick with the frost.

The baby spends most of its early days asleep in
its bag, stuffed feet downwards into the hood of its
mother’s sealskin or blanket dicky, but as time
passes and it begins to feel the desire to kick, it dis-
cards the pocket and nestles in the depths of the
hood, and you may see its beady and wide-awake
eyes peering over its mother’s shoulder as she walks
along. Sometimes the mother tires of the weight,
and, for the sake of a rest, dumps the baby on a
isnowdrift to play. “Poor little mite!” I fancy I
hear somebody saying, “will it not catch cold?” But
there the fat little object sits, chuckling and goo-ing
im grabbing handfuls of snow.

_ I have often seen small girls playing nursemaid,
trutting along with the big hood hanging lumpily
lover their backs, and the long tail trailing on the
snow. ‘They have no big hood of their own; a girl
fis not allowed to have one until she is old enough to
lget married ; so the little girl who sets out to act as

mursemaid borrows her mother’s. She would be
81 F

THE ESKIMO BABY

helpless without a hood; to carry the child in her
arms, or to try to wheel it in a “pram” or drag it
on a sledge would never satisfy it; the hood of the
woman’s dicky has been the Eskimo cradle longer
than memory can tell, and the gentle shrugging o
the shoulders, or the to-and-fro swaying of the body
which swings the hood in such a soothing fashion, a
things which come naturally to every Eskimo girl. —

I think that there is no more useful member of ar
Eskimo household than a growing daughter; she
minds the baby while the mother attends to the seal.
skins ; she chews the leather and helps at the stite
ing of the boots; she fetches water from the brook)
and scrubs the floor—and in a busy time a good
many Eskimo floors are scrubbed to clear away the}
traces of seals every day; she makes herself useful
about the house in countless little ways, and even
goes out fishing if there is nothing else to do; and
yet, when they first saw her, I warrant her parents
said they wished she had been a boy! A boy
different; he is not of much use until he is o
enough to go to the hunt; he drives off with tk
sledge and dogs and fetches firewood, or helps at tk
chopping, maybe, but most boys seem to spend th
greater part of their time amusing themselves.
but the boy is going to be a hunter, and there is
glory about that: nothing else is half so great, -
Eskimo eyes, as a really clever hunter; and ft
father who sees his boy running wild, up to all sori
of daring pranks, and growing headstrong and
willed, takes but little notice: the boy is growir
up healthy and strong—some day he will be
hunter.

How the mothers spoil their children!

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GIVNUSYAN OWINSY NV

THE ESKIMO BABY

boys, of course, they pet and pamper far more than
girls; the child nearly always gets its own way.
There is no such thing as punishment in an Eskimo
household, and very little jrestraint; and I am in-
clined to think that some part of the high death-rate
‘among the children, and especially the higher death-
rate among the little boys, is due to the laxity with
which the parents allow their children to grow up
instead of wisely restraining them.

Oh those children: the perky little rascals !

One day I was walking along the path that runs
in front of the houses, and I came upon a small boy
clambering down among the rocks and hummocks
that strewed the beach. He was a sturdy little
\fellow, and quite a baby. I judged him to be two
years old or so, certainly not more ‘than three; but
he was clad in the dignity of ridiculous little trousers,
so I must speak of him asa boy. He seemed to have
escaped from his mother, and to be making for the
beach on an adventure of his own; and when I looked
jtowards the line of houses [ saw a young woman
standing at one of the doors and calling to him.

“ Kaigit, kaigit ” (come back), she shouted.

The child took no notice at all.

* Kaigit, ernera” (come back, my son), cried the
mother.

This time the child looked round, but he went
sen on, barking his little knees against the sharp
points, and tumbling into holes in his hurry: “ Nia,
nia,” he screamed. I half expected the mother to
come and fetch him after that, for “Nia” is anything
but polite : it was the equal of a very defiant “ Shan’t ”
that the child shouted at his mother. She took no
notice; she was beaten, and accepted the situation

THE ESKIMO BABY

phlegmatically ; she turned back into the house to
get on with her work. . b
Meanwhile I was interested in the doings of the
small boy: there was some grim purpose in his little
mind, and I stayed to see the finish of the play. He
scrambled on until he came to a dog that lay sunning
itself behind a stone. Very likely it was one of hi:
father’s sledge dogs against which he had a grievance
for he caught it fearlessly by the scruff of the neck
and beat it with his tiny fist. The dog, grea
powerful brute, could have eaten the boy whole, a:
it were; but it made no resistance, simply cowering}
and whining under the little patting blows. I am)
certain that the boy did not hurt it, but it is bred in:
the slinking nature of the Eskimo dog that anything)
in the shape of mankind is master, irrespective ¢
size, and so the tiniest children, masterful little
mites, play among the dogs without any misgiving
Having fulfilled his purpose the boy administered @
last parting smack, and started on his voyage home
wards again, leaving the dog yelping and wheezing
with misery and terror.
I followed the little fellow to his home, ani |
found his mother busily brushing the snow off him)
and smiling with pride in her hardy little son. He
was disobedient, but what cared she? He i
growing strong and fearless; some day he would be
able to drive a team of dogs and paddle a kajak, ane
hunt the deer and seals and walrus; he was a prope
Eskimo boy. |
Not many days afterwards I went into the hous}
and found little Abraha in bed. ‘This was a strang
sight; it was surely not a case of illness, for ther

was no mistaking the mischief that twinkled in thos
84 :

THE ESKIMO BABY

bright little eyes that followed all my movements ;
but here was Abraha in bed in broad daylight, while
all the other boys—and babies too, for that matter
—were shouting and playing out of doors. I cast
about for a cause of the phenomenon. “Ah,” I
thought, “‘ Abraha’s mother has an eye to her boy’s
welfare after all: it is not all callousness; she has
the mother’s instinct to care for her children.”

| Above the stove there stretched a string, and on
|the string there hung a row of little boots and
| trousers and shirt and dicky, sopping with moisture
and steaming in the warmth. So there was a limit
|to the lengths to which the child might go un-
|checked. “Yes,” she said, “he has tumbled through
|the ice and got wet through, and he must stay in
| bed till his clothes are dry: I cannot let him have
his Sunday clothes, for he would spoil them—
juivétokulluk” (the little rascal)—this last with a
smile of real motherly pride at the restless little
fellow in the bed. “ Aksunai, Abraha,” I said; and
| Abraha turned his face away with a sheepish air, and
buried himself in the bedclothes.

Many a time, as I have watched the children in
the village, I have said to myself as this or the other
little boy trotted past me, “ How like his father he is
growing!” It was partly face, for many Eskimo
children are ridiculously like their parents in looks.
Partly it was clothes, for the same hand (the
mother’s) cuts and sews the clothing for the whole
household, and often the clothes of the bigger ones
descend to the smaller ones in turn, so that from one
cause or another the peculiarities in the cut of the
father’s clothes reappear in the rest of the family
wardrobe. Partly it is because the grown-up folks

THE ESKIMO BABY

keep the plump limbs and rounded outlines of the
child, even when they have passed middle age. And
partly it is the inherent tendency to imitate, which
is strong in the Eskimos, and which the children—_
living, as they do, constantly in the presence of their _
parents—have every opportunity of cultivating
And so the little boy grows like his father; he has_
the same pose, the same stride, the same lift of the”
feet, the same way of holding his hands; in fact, i
his every manner, and especially 1 in little mannerisms, |
he is his father over again.

CHAPTER VII

Cuoosina Names—Esxrmo CurtLpHoop—Do.tis—SLEepDGESs AND Dogs
—PuNTING oN THE Ice—Tue Littrte Hunrer—In Scuoou

N heathen times the Eskimos had heathen names,
and rare mouthfuls of the language some of the
names were, great unwieldy strings of letters, some-
times with a meaning, appropriate or otherwise, and
sometimes without. Among the heathen people who
have lately settled at Killinek, I found a boy and a
girl both called Nippisa, and I came across a little
girl whose parents knew her by the burdensome title
of Atataksoak (grandfather) !

The Christian Eskimos who people the Labrador
coast to-day have proper baptismal names, mostly
Biblical, such as Moses, Laban, Thomas, Miriam,
Sarah, and so on. ‘This habit of choosing Bible
names seems a very fitting one among a people
reclaimed from heathenism; it is a constant witness
and reminder of the change they profess and of the
God they serve. And [I like those old Bible names
that I met among the Eskimos, for the people steer
‘clear of the long and difficult names, and choose
those that are simple and dignified and easy to
_ pronounce.

I can well imagine that the large assortment of
Samuels and Labans and Michaels and Jonathans
to be found along the coast used to lead to some
confusion, and that is the reason why the Mission
ordained some years ago that the heads of the various

CHOOSING NAMES

families should choose distinctive surnames. And I —
can imagine, too, that the business of choosing ©
caused a lot of deep cogitation in those Eskimo —
minds, and a lot of scratching of heads and rumpling ©
of hair. Some men solved the difficulty by doubling
their Christian names, like Laban Labané, and —
Josef Josefé; others chose Eskimo words, such as ©
Sillit (a grindstone), which is the surname of our ~
Okak organist, and Kakkarsuk (a little mountain), —

or Ikkiatsiak (a shirt). Some adopted the name of
their occupation, like Iliniartitsijok (the school ~
teacher) and Igloliorte (the house builder)—the ~
latter being a man’s polite way of referring to his ©
work as village coffin-maker. R
Others went further afield in their search. One ~
happy-faced fellow invented a new word; he called |
himself Atsertatak, “ because,” he said, ‘that is like ~
the noise that the little birds make, and we are as ©
happy as a family of little birds.” |
Some chose ordinary English names which they
had heard among the schooner folk, and spelt them ~
in extraordinary Eskimo ways, like Braun and Grin; ©
and others honoured the missionaries by adopting
their names. One of the most dignified families in ~
Hebron goes by the name of “ Mess” ; and I can only ©
think that here the man chose what he thought an ~
absolutely unique and unhackneyed Eskimo surname ~
from the lettering on the top of a barrel of Prime ©
Mess Pork standing in the passage of the Mission ~
house. ES
So the Eskimos got their surnames, and are ~
handing them down from the last generation to this.
The Eskimo mother is not a stay-abed person;
she is quite ready to bring her baby to church for —
88 £

—s

CHOOSING NAMES

its christening on the third or fourth day of its life.
In fact, I have seen a mother bring her baby on the
very day of its birth, explaining her hurry by saying
that codfish were plentiful, and her husband really
could not stay in the village any longer, but must
leave at once for the fishing camp. There is not
as a rule, much trouble about choosing a name:
some relative or other is sure to be anxious to have
an Attitsiak (namesake), and he or she is honoured
if it be possible. A few years ago one of our
numerous Abias was on the point of becoming a
grandfather, and he obtained a promise from his

son and daughter-in-law that the child should be
| named after him. Unfortunately, as it happened,
the baby was a girl; and, to his great disappoint-

ment, the fond grandfather found that his own name

was unsuitable. But the young parents put their
heads together, and planned a splendid way of

overcoming the difficulty : the old man should have
his namesake; so they called the child Sopia, the
Eskimo version of Sophia and the nearest to Abia

that a girl’s name could be, and Sopia she is.

It struck me as an odd custom that a woman who
marries a widower should give her first child the name
of her husband’s late wife, but so the custom often is.

If there are no relatives or friends who parti-
cularly want a namesake, there are plenty of Bible
characters whose names can be used; and nowadays
some of the great names from history or from public
life are to be heard in daily use among the Eskimos, |
_ The pronunciation is sometimes quaint, and the
hames may be almost unrecognisable—Pita for
Bertha, and Edua for Edward, for example—but that
is only the way they have struck the Eskimo ear.

CHOOSING NAMES

Another characteristic custom among Eskimo—
parents is that, when one of their children has died,
they will almost certainly call the next arrival by ©
the same name. I have even known the queer name ©
of Ananias handed down from boy to boy in this |
way, in order, as the young parents said, that
the child’s grandfather might have an Attitsiak.
« Ananias!” I said. ‘‘ What an awful name for a
baby!” “‘ Aha,” said the father, “ but it is not after
Ananias the liar, but after the good Ananias, who
gave Saul back his sight.” |

I remember one young couple who were unable |
to settle on a name. ‘There were so many eligible”
namesakes that they could not choose one withou
as it were, snubbing the others. They carried their)
perplexity to the missionary. He, wise man, took) |
a safe course. “My own name is Henry,” he said,
“T shall be very pleased if you will call the baby |
after me; and I hope that everybody else will be |
pleased, too.” ‘ Piovok” (it is good), they said
‘his name shall be Henry.”

Now comes the real Eskimo touch: little He
failed to thrive; he pined away as so many Eskim«
babies do, and died. :

During the following year the parents were con
soled by the birth of another boy; and without”
hesitation they named him Henry after the littl
Henry they had lost. |

Only very few of the Eskimos have more thal
one name given in baptism; the people seem to b
well satisfied that one name is enough; but I have
known cases where parents who have lost several
babies one after the other give the latest arrival tw

names. I wondered whether away at the back o
90

ESKIMO CHILDHOOD

their minds they have the old superstition that two
names give the child a better chance of living.

As I sit, pen in hand, looking back over those
fascinating years in Okak, there come to my mind
pictures upon pictures of the Eskimo children at their
play ; and I think again, how true it is that the play-
time years of childhood are a preparation for the
active work of grown-up life. ‘The child is father
to the man” is a saying that holds true of the
Kskimos even more than of most peoples. The
Eskimo baby is born to live an Eskimo life; the boy
will grow up to be a hunter like his father; the girl
will be a mother some day, busy over the clothing
| and the sealskins and the bootmaking; and the in-
| herited aptitude for the ordinary work of an Eskimo
life shows itself and shapes itself in the children’s
games. I have seen the girls playing at “shop,” and
the boys playing at “rounders” with a rag ball, but
these are games that they have learnt from the mis-
sionaries’ children, mere interludes in their ordinary
play.

An Eskimo girl plays at being mother, just as
girls do all the world over, and there is generally a
baby brother or sister to lend reality to the play.
The real mother does not bother much about the
baby if there are big sisters to look after it.

If there is no baby to be nursed, the girls play
with dolls. I suppose there have been dolls among
the Eskimos from time immemorial—dolls of stone
or bone, scraped and scrubbed into shape with hard
flint stones; dolls of wood, with wide-eyed, staring
faces, carved after the Eskimo cast with high cheek-
bones and broad, flat noses; and dolls nondescript,
mere bundles of rags, = rather of sealskin scraps,

—

DOLLS

tied with thongs at waist and neck, and with features _
only visible to the fond little make-believe mother. —

But I am encroaching on the unknown things of ©
the sepeines past: wood and bealeicin moulder and

proof of such dolls remsins—~excepting the init :
skill that the Eskimos have in making and dressing ©
dolls. i

Some of the little girls are the proud owners of ©
flaxen-haired dollies from the English shops, but most —
of them are content with the native article, whittled —
from a stick of firewood by a fond father; but what-
ever sort of doll it be, the little mother dresses it in ©
Eskimo clothes. I have seen the children sitting on ©
the floor, planning and chattering, cutting out clothes —
for their dolls after the unchanging pattern, making ©
dickys and trousers with a due eye to the economy ~
of cloth, and learning, all unconsciously, to cut and ~
make the real clothes. By daytime the doll is an ©
Kskimo baby, poked feet first into its little mother’s ©
hood, and marched from side to side of the hut or ~
among the houses in the village: and, if she does not ~
know that she is watched, the little girl will put on
all the serious air of motherhood, and sway her body
to and fro, hushing and humming to get the fractious ©
baby to sleep. At night the child undresses her ”
doll, and lays it to rest on a scrap of reindeer skin ~
spread on a toy bedstead of boards, and covers it —

— a

|
with a gay quilt, and leaves it to sleep while she —

clambers into her own wooden bed and pulls her own —
reindeer skin or patchwork counterpane over her. It —
is the little girl’s chief game, the serious game of —
learning to be grown up. 4
The boys are playing the same game in their own —

92 i

SLEDGES AND DOGS

way, but it always seemed to me that there is vastly
more fun and frolic in a boy’s life. One of the most
fascinating relaxations of our long winter was to watch
the boys at play. Every day we could hear their
shouts as they romped and tumbled in the snow.
They rolled huge snowballs, and hollowed them out
and hid in them; they built proper little beehive snow
huts, and joined them by tunnels under the snow ;
and, more than anything else, they sledged and slid
down the hills. There was a steep slope beside my
window, where the drifting snow had filled the bed of
the stream, and this was the great sledging-place. I
watched them with a good deal of trepidation as they
careered down on little wooden runners strapped to
their feet—miniature ski, whittled from a stick of
the family firewood—but I never heard of an accident.

| However fast they were going they seemed able to

dodge the lumps in the path, and avoided collisions

by twisting round in a sharp curve. If they fell at

all, they always seemed to tumble into a snowdrift,

and picked themselves up and shook their shaggy

heads, and tramped up the hill again shouting with

laughter. Sometimes they tried the less exciting
forms of tobogganing, dragging out little sledges

made for one, and built after the Eskimo pattern with
the cross-pieces bound with thongs to the runners,
and bumped madly down the hill; or a party of boys
and girls joined at one of the big travelling sledges,
yelling and laughing, and shoving one another off
into the snow; but the boys preferred their sliding

shoes.

The rush and rumble of the runners on the hard
snow was a regular feature of winter life ; and on the

dull days, when the wind roared and the snow drove
93

SLEDGES AND DOGS

pelting against the window panes, I quite missed the —
merry noise. Sometimes there was a louder din than ~
usual, and this generally meant that four or five were _
huddled together on a big’ sealskin for want of a —
proper sledge, clinging to one another and roaring ©
with the delight of a new sensation. The sealskin —
seemed to slide easily enough when the hair was_
right way on, but it twisted and lurched over the ©
lumps in the track and ended by turning wrong way —
on and spilling its passengers into a snowdrift.
I have even seen the little rascals sliding down
the hills without anything at all in the shape of a
sledge, trusting to the wearing qualities of their |
sealskin clothes; and sometimes I have seen in-—
dignant mothers pounce round the corner and drag
their bright-eyed urchins off to less destructive ©
play. .
Sometimes a man’s first present to his son is a toy”
whip, with a lash five or six feet long, and children ©
hardly out of their babyhood crawl about the floor ~
shouting at imaginary dogs and’ dealing vicious
smacks at them. Out of doors the boys play with ~
full-sized whips, and it is marvellous to see how
cleverly the little fellows wield the thirty feet of ~
lash. They set an empty tin on a hummock of ice
and flick it off time after time from the full length of —
the whip; or two of them wage a hot battle, each
trying to entangle the other’s lash. But whips are
only accessories to the great game of sledge-driving,
and an Eskimo boy’s most constant plaything is—
the dog. The men always hand the puppy dogs ©
over to the boys; it is a training for both boy and
dog, for the boy uses all the tricks and mannerisms ~

that he has seen his father use in driving the big sledge, _
94 *:

SLEDGES AND DOGS

and the unwilling puppy is compelled to make a
trial of harness.

If there is a little sledge to be had, so much the
better; the boy can sit upon it and enjoy all the
delights of real travelling; if he has no sledge, he
harnesses the pup to a block of ice, which does very
well for a makeshift. These boys are wonderfully

| keen teachers; they have all the thoroughness of
the trained Eskimo hunter; and only one who has

tried to drive a team of Eskimo dogs can know what
a stock of patience and perseverance the child must
have to teach the puppy to keep its trace tight and
to know and obey the words of command. Most of
the boys are wise enough to train one:puppy at a time ;
but I once saw a big hulking lad trying to teach
a team of three, and naturally enough the three were

hardly ever all on their legs at the same time.

While one lay down to whine and whistle the others
would wander off in opposite directions to the extent
of their traces, and, finding themselves fast, they too

would lie down and whistle just as the boy had per-

suaded the other to move on. The experiment was
not a success, for after a time the lad got angry, and

| there seemed to be more temper than teaching in the
| thrashing he gave those poor pups. Of course every
| boy’s ambition is to drive full-grown dogs, but when
| that day comes his playtime is over, for he must be

off with the sledge to fetch firewood or seals. For
sheer merriment there is nothing to beat the sledge-

|game without dogs, when six or seven of the boys

slip the harness on their own shoulders and race away
with the sledge, wheeling this way and that at the
command of their driver. ‘They enter most heartily

Into the fun, crossing from one place to another in

;

PUNTING ON THE ICE

the team, just as dogs do, snapping and yelping and
whining and tugging to be on the move every time
the driver calls a halt.
Whatever game it be, you may be sure that
they are playing it thoroughly, even though it be
only the mischievous game of walking in the water
and getting their boots wet. Mothers and fathers
only wink at these water-pranks; the boys are
growing strong and hardy, and that is a great thing”
for a hunter; and, after all, their mischief is never”
malicious. :
Springtime provides the most exciting game of”
the whole year, when the ice breaks, and the tides
that come oozing up the beach bring great pans and
little flat pieces floating shorewards. 3
A floating piece of ice makes a splendid raft, tc
Kskimo ways of thinking, and I have seen crowds ¢
our Okak boys standing in ones and twos on thes
very unstable punts, and moving along by paddling
with their hands in the water or prodding at the
bottom with poles. The favourite idea is to put
boy on a big ice-pan and shove him away into dee
water, and then, after leaving him helpless for a suit
able time, to scramble and pole along to rescue him
Sometimes a dog is pressed into service to play thi
Robinson Crusoe sort of réle; but the dog generalh
considers itself in real danger, and does not wait for.
formal rescue; on the contrary, it takes matters int
its own hands (or paws), and after a time of terrifiec
whining slips miserably into the water and swim
ashore. q
I watched one bold spirit among the boys who
had found a long and narrow piece of ice that struch

him as a suitable kajak. He tried hard to stand on
96 :

THE ESKIMO Boy

A favourite boys’ game—punting on the broken ice in the spring-time—and all the more
dangerous because none of them can swim,

PUNTING ON THE ICE

it, but it was too wobbly, and time after time he
_ only just escaped a ducking by great agility; at last
he squatted on it tailorwise, balancing himself with
his long two-handed “ pautik ” (paddle), and steered to
and fro among the floating ice with all the skill and
grace of the practised kajak man.

After the ice has broken and gone, the Eskimo
boy becomes a sailor. He borrows a boat, and
hoists the sail, and fares forth before the wind for
the sheer joy of beating back against it. It some-
times seemed a reckless game, for I have seen little
fellows of six and seven, with a calico dicky hoisted
on an oar to catch the wind, tacking to and fro
against a breeze that made the little boat heel over
on its side; but they are knowing fellows, and very
rarely come to grief in spite of their daring.

_ The mastery of a boat seems to be another of
their inborn gifts ; indeed, one of our very occasional
|visitors at Okak told me that among the many
|people he had seen he had never met with boatmen
to excel the Eskimos, :

If the wind drops, the boys use the oars, and use
them strongly, too: it seems hardly believable, but
mere babies have the knack of rowing. Little
Abraha, next door to us, was often on the water
by himself before he was three, standing up because
his legs were too short for him to get a grip if he
sat, and tugging away at the pair of little oars. It
is strange to me that these children do not learn to
swim; they are on the water every day throughout
the summer, and dabbling in it when they are not
on it, and yet only a few can swim a stroke. It
is the only way in which their childish energy seems
wasted, though pepe Smeaing does not strike

:
|

THE LITTLE HUNTER

the Eskimo as a necessary accomplishment. In all -
their games the children are training hand and eye,
and learning things that will be useful some day:
and, above all, the Eskimo boy likes to feel himself
a hunter. ;

He makes a crossbow out of any bit of wood
that he can find—a stave of the family flour barrel
answers remarkably well—and goes out to shoot
birds. His weapon is not a formidable one, and he
does very little destruction; but, sometimes, when
the tame little snow buntings are fluttering about,
gathering for their flitting in the late autumn or
just arriving in the early spring, the little crossbow
answers well to the steady little hand and keen
eye, and, though it seems cruel to think of it, the)
Eskimos have little birds for dinner. Boys of!
thirteen or fourteen go up the valleys with real)
guns, hunting hares and ptarmigan; but this is)
serious work, for powder and shot are too precious)
to be wasted on mere play. i

A boy came to our door one day, and asked for
an empty meat-tin. A few minutes later I saw a
lot of them with harpoons, enjoying an imaginary
seal hunt with the meat tin for quarry. They had
flung it into a big pool left by the tide, and were
taking turns at spearing it. They flung their heavy
harpoons, and splashed through the water to fetck
them, amid a chorus of triumph or derision according
to their skill. Some of them were able to “kill”
the tin every time, but the smaller ones found thi
harpoon too heavy; the inborn skill was there, fo’
one little fellow had a toy spear of his own, and
was flinging it like a thorough artist. |

So these little hunters learn to be men. It ha
98

IN SCHOOL

been the same ever since the Eskimos were known;
far back in the old heathen days it was the same;
the child was a prospective hunter. As I wandered
on the headlands that jut into the sea from the
heights of Okak Island I found many an old heathen
grave, with the mouldering weapons and the moss-
grown pots laid beside the mouldering bones; and
I found the children’s graves among the rest, with
the tiny toy lamp and cooking-pot and the toy
harpoon placed beside the child when they laid
him away in his heap of stones above the frozen
soil.

And to-day, when the Eskimos are a Christian
nation, touched by the finger of civilisation, the
children, boys and girls, are spending their playtime
in fitting themselves for the hard life that is their
heritage.

| But nowadays life is not all play, though it be
playing at work. During the months of winter,
when the people are grouped at the Mission stations,
there are regular school hours for the children. I
\walked in one day at Okak when Benjamin was
|drilling arithmetic into the heads of a score of
‘\bright-eyed little Eskimos, and the picture of that
|

\|Eskimo school class is one of the most vivid of my
\jmany pictures of Labrador life.

I} “What is four times four?” said Benjamin.
{Phe little eyes stared, and the little mouths opened,
jand the little fingers began to count under the
|Shadow of the desk. Benjamin made it easier.
‘I saw four sledges,” he said. There was a general
) Weave of interest: Benjamin was going to tell them
story. ‘They shuffled their feet and elbows, and

tled down to listen. “I saw four sledges: they
99

IN SCHOOL

were coming round the bend from the sealing-place. |
Each sledge had four dogs to pull it. How many
dogs were there, gathered all together ?”

That made thinking easy; the little brains had
got something familiar to work upon; there was
a picture of sledges in their minds, and like a flash
came the answer, “Sixteen dogs—they are sixteen.”
“Yes,” said Benjamin, “four times four makes six-
teen; don’t forget.” The little faces were serious
again: it was not much of a story, after all; but
they had learnt something without expecting it.
Wise man, Benjamin; he was an Eskimo child
himself once, and has had a careful training from”
the missionaries; he has learnt to present things
in a way that the Eskimo mind can grasp. After”
a few more exercises with the table-book I saw”
the little eyes becoming restless; thoughts we
beginning to wander; and Benjamin called for
change. Shock-headed little Moses fetched the)
books out of the cupboard, and handed them round,,
and the chubby faces brightened again.

Benjamin announced a psalm, and the lit
fingers grew busy as they turned the pages;
then I saw first one boy and then another s
up to spell through a verse. It was really wonderful
to watch the eager way in which they pursued the
alarming strings of letters that stretched from margini
to margin, and gathered them into syllables under
Benjamin’s guidance, and made out the proper
meaning. When the psalm was finished Moses
collected the books; then the children sang a hymr
and ran out to romp in the snow. j i

|
yl

ALLO

and |
:

100

CHAPTER VIII

Birtupays—A Harp-workine Prorpte—Josuva THE Ivory-
Carver—CLoTHING AND CLEANLINESS—OLp AGE

NE little family custom that has gained a firm
place in the hearts of the Eskimos is the cele-
bration of birthdays.

This appeals to their sense of the picturesque,
and a birthday is never allowed to slip by without
some little attempt at marking the day. What the
number of years may be makes no difference; elderly
| folks are just as fond as the children of the tokens
| that make the day a special one; and Eskimos are
not people who are shy of letting their ages be
| known ; indeed, a fiftieth birthday is a time of special
jubilation.

Many a time I have gone into houses and found
decorations of moss and green leaves, or coloured
| paper when there are no leaves, fastened upon the
walls, and as likely as not the number of the person’s
|years worked jin moss or wool and hung up like a
wreath for all to admire; and I have shaken hands
with men and women—aye, and babies too, for the
babies must be noticed—and have said, “ Your birth-
day,eh? how many years are you?” which is the very
height of Eskimo politeness. Friends go running
into the house to offer good wishes; there is food
for those who care to eat—seal meat or codfish for
certain, and maybe a hunk of home-made dough

plentifully besprinkled with currants.
101

BIRTHDAYS

They are great times, these birthdays; but there
is nothing riotous about them. The dances and
orgies of heathen days are forgotten, and instead you
may hear the sound of singing. Many a time have
I passed along the village in the dark of the evening
and have heard the charming sound from some little
hut; the old familiar hymn tunes sound very sweet
in the loneliness of Labrador. First one voice, then
another, rises above the balanced harmony; and I
have stood listening, with a queer lump in my throat, ~
as verse followed verse and hymn followed hymn
and I have known that this was the family gathering
that brings the Eskimo birthday to a close.

There is much that is pleasant in the memory of —
life among these Eskimo hunters. In spite of their
thoughtlessness, their sometimes unreasonable de-_
mands, their excitability, their proneness to quarrel,
in spite of their repulsive habits, and the occasional
glimpses that I got of their native distrust of people
from other lands, there is a warm spot in my heart>
for the Eskimos. In my memory of them the good”
qualities overbalance the bad. But in spite of the)
fascination of life in Labrador, I do my utmost if
this book to write of the Eskimos exactly as I found)
them, and I believe my picture of them to be a plain)
and unvarnished one. |

One of the most winning things about thi
Kskimos is their very simplicity; so simple ant
direct they are that at times they can be too con

words. On the other hand, they have the. gift of
graphic and fluent speech, and can describe thei
doings with thrilling gestures and telling emphasi

when they choose. But they must get warmed to
102

BIRTHDAYS

their subject; a mere question will not set them
going. I thought that they must have a great fund
of anecdote and adventure; and so they have, if they
only knew it. I imagined that a question would
start the hunter on a long recital of hairbreadth
escapes and thrilling races after runaway dogs, of
fights with polar bears, and lonely nights among the
wolves in the woods. But no; these adventures and
escapes are commonplace to them; so much a part
of the Eskimo life that they are passed over as too
trivial to notice. I heard from an old missionary
that Abia, my next-door neighbour, had been in his
youth the strongest man in Okak, strong enough to
kill a dog with a single blow of the whip from the
full length of the thirty-feet lash. And I used to
put leading questions to Abia, such as—‘‘I suppose
you sometimes met bears when you went to your
fox-traps ?”’ or ‘‘ You were a very great hunter, were
you not?” but Abia’s mind was on the present ; he
had no room in it for reminiscences; and he would
say, “ Yes, I used to be a great hunter, but I cannot
hunt now, I am old. My son Samuel can hunt, and
he is now gone after seals. I have been chopping
firewood to-day.”

And they can talk furiously. They are very
excitable, and fly into a passion over a trifle.

But though they are quickly aroused, they are
just as easily appeased. A man may be in a terrible
temper, and with his wild eyes and tumbled hair and
Waving arms make a very threatening picture as he
jabbers and shouts; but a few minutes afterwards he
is friendly and smiling again, bearing no malice.

I heard very little of family feuds or long-drawn

quarrels while I was among the Eskimos: the
3 103

A HARD-WORKING PEOPLE

nearest to any such thing was the case where a man, .
long years before, had stolen an axe from another |
man’s house, and the descendants of these two men
used to remind each other of the episode whenever
they happened to have a quarrel in hand. When ~
they do quarrel it is next to impossible to avoid
hearing them, for they stand out of doors, pouring —
forth voluble streams of grammatical language by —
turns, at the top of their voices. The horrible old —
heathen blood-feuds have gone, and a peaceful and ~
friendly tone, both among themselves and towards
strangers, is one of the characteristics of the Eskim
people to-day. :

There is just a little reserve with strangers, but I
found as I went in and out among them that their
shyness wore off, and I was able to watch them at |
their work and learn their characteristic ways. I
was rather surprised at first to find so many of the™
men asleep in the daytime; and when I went into a)
hut and saw the father of the family, a lusty middle-
aged Eskimo hunter, sprawling snoring over a box, |
or curled up on the bed or the floor, I could not™
help thinking him a lazy fellow. This is the usual
first impression. But I know that the Eskimo is a)
hard-working man: if he is asleep in the, daytime he”
has earned his rest by trudging through the soft)
snow of the woods to his fox-traps, or driving his
dogs to fetch seals.

The Eskimos are a hard-working people, but
they have their lazy side: they are apt to dawdle,
over work to which they are not accustomed. I had:
to employ a good many men at carpentering and
building, and I found that they needed almost

constant supervision if the work was to go ahead)
104

A HARD-WORKING PEOPLE

with any speed. Even with supervision the work
came foreign to their nature, and more than once on
fine mornings the workmen failed to turn up, and I
learnt later in the day that they had been tempted
by the beautiful weather or by a report of seals in the
bay, and had gone for a change in the form of a day’s
hunting. Women scrape sealskins or sew boots from
morning till night ; but set them to pile the firewood
to dry on the hillside, and they sit and chatter, or
even, some of them, fall asleep, unless you keep an eye
upon them. ButI could never call the Eskimos lazy
after seeing them trot forty miles or more in a day, or
sit rowing for twenty-four hours at a stretch, or work
jlike Trojans the whole day through to let the Mission
|ship catch a favourable tide for sailing.
_ No, my impression of them is that they are a
hard-working people. On stormy days the men sit
at home, smoking and talking; they make nets or
it strips of walrus hide into dog-whips, or do any
its of work that may be necessary ; they may even
be busy carving ivory. If there is no work to be
done, they sprawl and chat and smoke and slumber.
_ Ivory carving is practically a lost art among the
Eskimos. For one thing, walrus tusks are too scarce
since the walruses have been scared away northward,
jand the people need all they can get for the making
of harpoon heads; for another thing, time is too
precious nowadays, and there is not a good enough
market for the quaint little figures of men and
sledges and birds, and all the animals that an Eskimo
knows; so it comes about that the modern Eskimo
young man does not bother to learn ivory carving.
There is a little figure standing on my table as I

write, a tiny white bird, and it carries me back to the
105

JOSHUA THE IVORY-CARVER

day when I first landed at Okak. It was Joshua
who brought it; a short, squat figure of a man, with —
a great mop of coarse black hair and a shaggy black —
beard—Joshua Nujaliak (the bearded one), called after —
his beard because beards are a rarity among the
Eskimos, better known as Joshua the Ivory-carver. —
That little bird was Joshua’s “ meeting present”: he |
gave it the name himself, and, although I have heard
of parting presents, this was the first meeting present ©
in the course of my experience. ‘ Meeting present,” —
said Joshua; “me come say how-de-do”; and
though my knowledge of the language was at that ~
time limited to the single word of greeting”
«“ Aksunai,” Joshua’s smattering of English helped”
the hour along famously.
He described his carving work to me, mostly”
in dumb show, making jags in the air with his arm
to represent a saw, and rubbing the imaginary work
with a stumpy finger, to the accompaniment of a
grating noise in his throat, which, I ia tua meant ©
the file.
“No plenty aivek (walrus),” he said, holding two)
fingers to his mouth to represent the tusks, so that Ty
might not misunderstand him; “all gone bye’m bye
—no more tusks to carve.” oS
Poor Joshua did not live to see many more>
aiveks ; he died in the big influenza epidemic of 1904.)
My last meeting with him before I saw him on his”
deathbed was in July, when a schooner, bound for ™
Hebron, ran into Okak Bay to find a pilot. +
After a little cogitation Joshua was chosen; he
knew the way along the coast, and he knew enough
English to make his meaning plain; so off he went”

to get ready. Half-an-hour later I watched hin
106

JOSHUA THE IVORY-CARVER

stalk majestically down the jetty, clad in all his
finery. I do not mean that he had donned his
sealskin boots and trousers, and the special white
“dicky” that he kept for church; no, the office
of pilot appealed to him as demanding something
extraordinarily fine, and so he marched proudly
along, clad{in hob-nailed boots and striped trousers,
with a big flapping frock coat hanging loosely from
his shoulders, and his long black hair crowned by
an ancient chimney-pot hat.

_ Under ordinary circumstances he would instinc-
tively have seized an oar; but on this splendid
occasion he sat bolt upright in the stern of the boat,
occasionally clutching at his beloved hat lest the
gusts of wind should snatch it from him, and allowed
the schooner’s crew to take him on board.
Good-hearted, simple-minded Joshua, he did the
piloting all right ; but he took to his bed soon after
he got home, and we had to bid him good-bye.
ost a good friend when Joshua died ; and Labrador
ost the best of the old Eskimo ivory-carvers.

‘. The art is passing ; from lack of tusks and the
call of the hunt less and less time is given to this
interesting pursuit, and every year sees fewer and
|fewer of the quaint little figures sent home for sale:
| the native skill is there, and only needs rousing, as I
|have proved by getting some carvings done in wood
and soft stone.

_ No matter at what time of the day I went into the
Eskimo houses, the women always seemed to be busy
with the sealskins; but, for some of them at least,
there are times when they put the skins aside and
ply their needles on softer stuff; and they turn out

some very neat and pretty embroidery to ornament
107

CLOTHING AND CLEANLINESS r

their Sunday dickys. Their taste lies in the direc-
tion of brilliant colours and startling mixtures; and
I was amused to find that Deborah, our best needle-
woman at Okak, had mixed a few glaring pink flowers
among the delicate pattern that she was working in
art shades of green and brown at the order of «
English visitor. |

Deborah thought that the pattern was vastly
improved by these vivid dabs of pink; and, after all.
the result of her quaint ideas was characteristically
Kskimo.

Whatever work they may be doing in their homes
it is quite likely that the women have discarded thei
skirts, and are clothed in blanket trousers, as the ole
style was. It struck me asa sensible sort of dress)
for them, better suited to the work they have to do)
than skirts which get draggled and oil-stained ; and!
yet, I suppose, the reason that they so seldom appes
in public in their trousers is that they are afraid of}
being laughed at. Probably shyness has led to thei
adoption of the skirt, for they are far more commo
at the southern stations, which touch the fringe c
civilization, than at Okak andj the villages furthe
north, where there are still women who go abou
their daily work in trousers. I had no difficulty i
persuading them to be photographed in their nationé
dress; they are, in their inmost hearts, proud of 1
and save a specially fine outfit for festival days i
church. When I went to take a picture of old Rut
I had the good fortune to get a snapshot of anothe
old Eskimo habit. Ruth was highly flattered at th
idea of a photograph, and became quite excited abou
it; in fact, her face was perspiring so with the flustery

into which she had worked herself, that before doffin;
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CLOTHING AND CLEANLINESS

|her skirt for the picture she wiped her face—and
| pocketed her handkerchief in her boot. That is the
|Eskimo pocket! Big parcels go into the hood,
jalong with the baby; but the woman’s boot is the
|hiding-place for all her smaller treasures. I have
|) seen hymn-books, biscuits, pipes, bits of bead-work or
|sealskin pockets for sale, wools, rolls of cloth, money
| —all sorts of things, stuffed into the convenient wide
leg of the boot.

| It is no easy matter to write so as to give an
adequate idea of the stage at which the Christian
| Eskimos have arrived in the things of cleanliness.
|The heathen were dirty by choice; or rather, they
| were dirty because they knew no better, and because
they were content to remain so. Things have
|changed since heathen days; lessons have been
| taught ; and my life in Okak gave me some small hint
| of the difficulties and the prejudice that the old pioneer
| missionaries had to face in making a beginning.

. There is now a foundation to build on; the
|children of to-day are born of parents who have
learnt some of the lessons ; they have from their birth
Some of the ambition to be neat and clean which is
so clear a mark of civilisation. I cannot hold the
Eskimos up as a cleanly race; they have an immense
amount to learn; they are still far behind true
Civilisation in habits of cleanliness and sanitation ;
but this I can say, they are far, far ahead of their
heathen brothers.

_ It may, I think, be fairly said of the Eskimos to-
day that they keep themselves and their clothes re-
markably clean considering the nature of their work.
In the north, where no trees grow, and seal-oil lamps
provide light and a saa, 2 tinge of warmth for the

CLOTHING AND CLEANLINESS

huts, the people look dirty. The huts are small, and |
all the work of skinning and dressing the seals must
be done in them because out-of-doors everything
freezes as hard as stone; and so the work-a-day
clothes are black and shiny with oil. But by every
bedside there stands a box, and in that box is a clean”
outfit for Sunday use. I can imagine that that was
the beginning of the lesson in the hands of those old”
missionaries: “‘ Come to the House of God neat and”
clean”; and if any proof were needed of the truth
of my idea, it could be found in the person of a man
who died at Nain some three or four years ago. The
poor fellow was deaf and dumb from birth, and had
learnt to talk in signs; and his way of saying: |
“Sunday ” was to rub his hands over his face—“ The
day on which he washed his face” !

I found the people using soap and water fairly,
often, and taking a good deal of pride in their appear=
ance; in fact, the women and girls are very fastidious’
indeed about their hair, and wash and comb it with
real feminine pride. As for the washing of clothes,,
that they do in their own way. They wet them and
soap them, and then drop them into the brook anc
trample on them; and there they used to stand, in
a pool in the brook just outside my window, tramp-
ling in the shallow water, singing and talking to pass
the time, and, alas, puffing at their pipes. P.

It seems strange that the Eskimos should b
addicted to so essentially an Indian habit as smoking:
How did they learn it, and when? Was it the
“pipe of peace,” after one of their old quarrels, that
started the craving? Or did they first get it from
passing vessels? Perhaps so; but who can tell”

Eskimos and Indians are hereditary foes: even in my
110

F
£

AN OLD WoMAN FISHING

Seated in the shelter of a hummock of snow, with their eyes protected from the glare by goggles
f smoked glass, these old folks spend hours fishing through holes chopped in the ice. They are
ot troubled with cold fingers, and at the end of the day they drag their catch home upon little
ledges.

” & ‘
alt .
. bod ? a me :

pa ~ ag |
~~. tas . : f
"Tae vi t \ &
Ahtesa (>=

a { ie he
. Aa e w
. - J :

An Eskimo WOMAN SCRAPING A SEALSKIN

The skin is stretched over a board in a tub and the woman is preparing it for boot-making by
taping offthe hair. Formerly the shoulder-blade of a seal was used for the scraping, but the rounded
pddlers’ knives are now used.

OLD AGE

time I have seen Eskimos scared at the mention of
“Indian,” and when I travelled southward my drivers
once asked me in awestruck voices, “‘ Shall we see the
Allat” (Indians) ?

However it be, there it is; the Eskimos smoke.
Men and women alike—aye, and unless my eyes have

\deceived me, children too, in a furtive way—all puff
with real relish; though happily the women are shy
jof allowing themselves to be seen with the pipe
between their teeth.

In my visits to the Eskimo households I could
not fail to be struck by the patience and devotion
with which the people care for their aged ones. The
old man or woman, feeble and past work, is sure of
a home with a married son or daughter or other
relative, and if the poor old body has no relations,
there is enough hospitality in the hearts of the
poorest of the people to make them open their
homes to the needy.

I found age a very deceptive thing. “Sixty-two”
might be the answer from a bowed old figure crouch-
ing over the stove—I would have guessed twenty
years more than that. The fact is that the Eskimo
wears out fast; after fifty he begins to decline, and
few live long after sixty. I have known a few over

seventy, and the people told me with wonderment
about an old woman who lived to be eighty-two,
and who worked to the last; but these are great
rarities, and it must be a unique thing in one’s
lifetime to meet with an Eskimo great-grandmother.
These very old people nearly always seem to be
active to the last; they have an unusual store of
vitality ; and they die in harness, dropping out like

those who are too tired to go any further, and passing
111

OLD AGE

away without illness or suffering. They are
always those who have clung the most closely to
their own native foods, and can always speak o
having been mighty hunters once upon a time.

Their activity and endurance are remarkable
Women who are too old and toothless to chev
the boot-leather can still scrape the sealskins
perhaps with a skill that the younger women lack
if they are too blind and feeble to scrape, they car
sit behind a wall of snow upon the sea-ice, and ji
for the sleepy rock-cod through a hole. “Are yor
cold?” I asked old Klara. She laughed in he
shrill old way: “I am an Eskimo,” she said. Ol
Abia, my white-haired neighbour from the hut unde
the shadow of the hospital wall, was a most energetié)
old fellow. He used to make me anxious fo
his safety. One morning I saw him go off ove
the ice, dragging a small sledge. I thought I
had gone to gather sticks along the sledge track)
and that he would be home in a couple of hours),
He was not at the evening meeting, however, and)
a meeting in church was a thing that he neve
missed. |

I searched for his white head among the rows}/
of black ones, but he was not there. His so
Samuel was in the choir all right ; I could hear
powerful tenor when we sang; so I waited for hi
after the meeting and asked “ Abia, nanneké?
(where is Abia ?).

«“ A-a-tsuk” (I don’t know), answered Samuel.

“Where did he go this morning ? ’

« A-a-tsuk.”

‘“‘ Had we not better go and look for him ?”

‘ A-a-tsuk,” said Samuel, with a grin; “ kujanr

112

OLD AGE

(never mind)—the old man is all right—he is an
Eskimo!”

Then Samuel went home to bed.

Old Abia turned up smiling the next afternoon,
dragging a sledge-load of trout behind him. He had
suddenly bethought himself of a lake among the
hills where he used to catch trout. He walked the
ten miles to the frozen lake; jabbed a hole in the
ice with his “‘t6k” (square-headed spear); and then
crouched over the hole dangling a bit of red wool
in the water, and spearing the trout with his
“kakkivak” (trout-spear) as fast as they came within
reach. Before he was satisfied night had fallen, so
this hardy old Eskimo of sixty-nine lay down to
sleep in the open. He woke up fresh and happy
in the morning, and after another turn at trout-

spearing he dragged his load home—and thought
nothing about it!

113 H

CHAPTER IX

Makine a SitEpGeE—My First Sitepce JourNEey

S soon as the winter was fairly established
began to think of visiting some of the othe
stations by sledge. With this idea in mind
consulted Jerry and Julius, the two men who mad
it their business to fetch our drinking water, anc
asked them about a sledge. There was a respectable=)
looking sledge about the premises, a year or two old;
maybe, but good enough for us to take on our)
occasional trips about the bay, and I asked the men}
whether this would do for a trip to Hebron. a
They were unanimous and very emphatic
“ Piungitoarluk” (it is awfully bad), they said, and}
besought me to let them make me a good sledge,
«Very well,” I told them, “ you shall make me a good}
sledge, and I will take you with me to Hebron.”
They were delighted, beaming and chuckling with)
glee, and could hardly be persuaded to finish fillin
the water tanks, so eager were they to be at work o1
the new sledge. They were prepared to take thé
whole thing in hand, from start to finish, and next
morning were off to the woods at daybreak in search
of a big, straight tree for the runners. I happened td
tell the storekeeper about their objections to the old
sledge, and he, being a man well used to the ways of
the Eskimos, smiled rather broadly. “The sledge ig
not so bad,” he said ; ‘“‘ our postman carried the mails

to Nain with it last week; but the postman madé
114

MAKING A SLEDGE

that sledge, and your water-men did not. That
makes a good deal of difference.”

* Just so,” I thought ; “ the Eskimos are like every-
body else: every man likes his own handiwork the
best !”

In the dark of the evening Jerry and Julius came
home from the woods, helping the dogs to haul an
enormous tree stem. I was astonished that such a
big tree was to be found in Labrador; but the men

only smiled. They had been a good many miles

that day, struggling through the soft snow of a
sheltered valley that they knew, where the trees are
shielded from the winds and have managed, in the

| course of centuries, to reach a useful size.

I think I am right in writing of “centuries” in

| the life of those trees; for the superintendent of the

mission, Bishop Martin of Nain, planted a seedling

| fir to celebrate the birth of his first son; and when I
\saw the tree where it stands in a sheltered nook on

the hillside at Nain, it was knee high—and that was
soon after the young man’s twenty-first birthday !

_ Jerry and Julius got one advantage from using
Labrador wood for my sledge; it needed no season-
ing. “Ay,” they said, “there is no wood for sledges
like the Labrador wood; and that is why the

|Avanémiut (northerners) send to Okak for their

sledge wood.”
_ Next morning I found them sawing the tree into

planks; Jerry, being the more learned man, was
laying top-sawyer and guiding the saw, while

| ulius stood underneath and knotted his great

uscles with the power of his pulling. They had 4
rorkshop all ready close at hand; it consisted of

two big blocks of frozen snow set about six feet
115

MAKING A SLEDGE

apart, and on these they laid the planks to be shaped
and smoothed. I offered them the use of the
carpenter’s bench in the hospital, but they declined
the offer with scorn. They were better used to
their open-air work-bench, and seemed to use the
tools quite well with their hands cased in thick
sealskin gloves; at all events, the sledge-making
went on apace, and each time I went out I found
them a little further on with it. All the men who
had any time to spare were clustered round to
watch, and, no doubt, to keep up a constant fire of
comments; but the chatter was always good-
humoured, and the men seemed to get on the faster
for it. As my sledge grew under their hands, I
found that they were making it sixteen feet long,

and two and a half feet broad. It had twenty-six”
cross-pieces, and never a nail did they use. ‘“ Kappé,
they said, “nails no good: plenty soon break: seal
hide ananak.’’ They set the runners on the blocks,)
and bored holes for the binding: then stood them uf
a couple of feet apart and bound the cross-pieces t¢
them, first the front and back ones, then the middle)
one, and then the others to fill up the spaces. There)
was a gentle upward curve from back to front—to)
make the sledge rise better to the snowdrifts, the
said; and the runners were not set quite upright, bu
splayed slightly outwards—to keep the sledge fror
slipping sideways; and every bit of the work was}
done with a neatness and exactness that the mos

skilled of carpenters might envy. Jerry and Julius)}
may have thought that their sledge was the be
ever made, but there are fully a score of men i)
Okak who can build a sledge without a fault, as)

perfect as a sledge can be.
116 i

MAKING A SLEDGE

The runners were shod with strips of iron, a style
that has quite ousted the old plan of shoeing with
bone or mud. I have seen a few Eskimo sledges
with bone runners; the people say that they serve
better in the soft snow of the springtime; but mud
I have never seen, and probably my Okak neighbours
have forgotten how to use it. The Killinek people
still fancy it; they mix clay and moss with water in
a pot, and plaster it on hot. It freezes instantly, and
must then be scrubbed to smoothness. It is cheap,
and that is the only advantage it has over iron; it is
so brittle that every collision with a jagged rock
knocks a bit off, and for this reason the travelling
man from the Killinek neighbourhood carries a pot
for mud-boiling among the load on his sledge, and is
ready to halt at any time on the road and do a job
of plastering.

Jerry and Julius screwed the irons on to the
Tunners, and sand-papered them till they shone;
and then, exactly four days after the fetching of
the tree, they dragged the sledge up to the door
of the hospital, and left it standing on the snow.
**We dare not take it indoors,” they said, ‘‘ because
it would warp.”

I admired that handsome new sledge of mine,
and thought to have a memento of it: I called to
the crowd of men who had followed it to the door,
and asked them, “ Which of you can make me a little
toy sledge, the likeness of that one?” ‘They looked
at one another, and said “ Atsuk” (I don’t know) ;

| but a bustling little fellow asked again what the
| question was, and then came forward saying “Uvanga,
limmakka” (I can, probably). I explained what I

| wanted, and he nodded and lit his pipe to help him
117

MAKING A SLEDGE

to think. “This big sledge of mine is sixteen feet
long,” I said; “make me a sledge just as many inches ~
long, and two and a half inches broad instead of feet, °
then it will be adsingoamarik (the very image).”
I found him a little box, and he went off to start
his work. Presently he came back. ‘“’'Tukkekan-
gilak,” he said.
‘What is the matter, Efraim ?”
“It is not like an Eskimo sledge.” |
“Tf you make it sixteen inches by two and a
half, and three-quarters of an inch high, it will be
exactly like.”
«« Atsuk,” said Efraim. However, I persuaded”
him to finish the little sledge, and it stands as an
ornament in my room to this day; but Efraim was
not satisfied. ‘“'To your eyes it may look all right,”
he said, “but to the eyes of the People it is all)
wrong. It is too long and narrow”—and that was
the end of the matter. But I know that it is an >
exact model of my Eskimo travelling sledge, made
carefully to scale by Efraim’s nimble fingers; and”
only the Eskimo sense of proportion is odd ! a
It was in the bitterest of the winter cold that I”
made my first sledge journey. By this time the”
people had invented a name for me; they said my
own name, “'Tukkekangilak,” had no meaning—_
which very possibly may be true, though their real)
reason was that they dislike a name that ends in a7
consonant, unless it be a “t” or a “k.” IT heard?
various references to “ Atta” and “ Hoddo,” which)
were, I suppose, my own name Eskimo-ised ; bu
before long these dropped out and I became Aniasi-"
orte, the Pain Hunter. And so, during the last day:

118

MY FIRST SLEDGE JOURNEY

was going to Hebron, and that Jerry and Julius were
to be the drivers. A goodly number of the people
made up their minds to go too, and thus it came
about that I headed a procession of fourteen sledges.
At the outset I knew nothing about it, for we
started in pitchy darkness at five o’clock in the
morning. Julius called it a fine morning, but as far
as I was concerned it might have been midnight.
I could see nothing but some black and shadowy
Shapes moving to and fro in the dim glimmer of a
hurricane lamp, and if it had not been for the spice
| of new excitement I could have wished myself back
among the blankets. I was well padded with woollens
and sealskins, but the night air nipped my nose a
little, and I was glad to keep rubbing it with my
sealskin glove.

Julius, like the experienced driver he is, went
|through the list of travelling necessaries to make
|/Sure that he had got them all aboard, and then told
|me that he was ready to start.

Immediately hands were thrust towards me from
all parts of the darkness, and I realised that a huge
crowd of people had silently collected to watch us
off, and to shake our hands and say “ Aksunai.”
“ Aksuse,” I shouted ; “‘ taimak (ready), Julius” ; and
at the word Jerry sprinted along the track, and
the dogs went racing after him. The line tightened
with a jerk, and the sledge started with a bound
that nearly threw me off. Some good friend seized
the hurricane lantern, and ran along with it to
show the way among the boulders, but he had to
be nimble to keep out of the way of the boisterous
dogs. Sledge dogs, unless they are very tired, are

always eager to be on the move; and ours were in
119

MY FIRST SLEDGE JOURNEY
such a hurry that they tried to take short cuts of i

their own, leaping over great snowdrifts and franti- —
cally straining to climb. huge hummocks of ice, |

and we might easily have lost some of them, or at —
least have had some broken harness, if it had not —
been for the willing help of our army of spectators. —
That dash between the hummocks to the sea ice ©
was like a nightmare: the flickering lantern, darting ©
hither and thither; the dim shapes of men and ©
boys rushing about, chasing the unruly dogs; the ©
yelping and shouting, with the pad-pad of footsteps

and the grind of the runners—the whole scene comes ‘|

back to me as I write. And all the while the people ©
were sticking to the sledge like flies, sitting, standing, hi
kneeling, clinging, getting a ride somehow, all in |
a great good humour, and dropping off one by one ©
when we reached the sea ice. |

So I[ got my first send-off. ¥

We were fairly on the way; and Julius struck —
a match and lit his pipe. In the flicker I got a ©
glimpse of his face, all glittering with frost; his ©
stubby beard was decorated with icicles, and his ©
eyebrows were crusted with frozen snow; and when ~
I passed a hand over my own face, I found that —
I was in the same plight. Julius was on the watch: —
he leaned over to me and said, ‘“‘ Did you wash your |
face this morning ?” ;

“‘ No,” said I, “the missionary told me not.” g

“Good,” said Julius, “now your facewillnot freeze.” |

I shivered to think what would have happened to
my face if I had washed it: as it was, my cheeks |
and chin ached with the cold, and I could not help |
raising a furtive hand from time to time, just to _

make sure that I was not yet frozen.
120

———$—$<<—$ — - — * —_—__

MY FIRST SLEDGE JOURNEY

By seven o'clock the sky was beginning to
lighten, and we made our first halt at the famous
ten-mile point Parkavik (“the meeting-place”’).
There the men disentangled the dogs, which by
continual crossing over had’ plaited their traces
together like the strings of a maypole ; and I thought
it well to drink some hot coffee. The coffee was
not hot, although it was in a stone jar wrapped in
a dogskin, but it was drinkable, which is more than
I can say for it a few hours later, when it had

-assumed the form of ice-cream—not particularly

tempting under the circumstances. The drivers
did not want any: they had taken a good draught

| of water and a lump of frozen seal meat before

starting, in addition to the breakfast of bread and
meat and weak tea that I had given them, so they
were content to wait a while. During their tedious
unravelling of the knotted harness the other sledges
began to come up, and soon the whole fourteen
were assembled at Parkavik. We waited until all
were ready, for the very simple reason that if we
had started no exertions could have kept the other
teams still, and so it came about that the starting
again was by way of being an imposing spectacle.
My sledge, with the drivers swelling with pride,
headed the procession along the frozen fiord, and
the others followed at proper intervals.

Not the least interesting part of this unique sight
was the shadow: the sun was just up, and there was
a marvellous string of spider-legged dogs and top-
heavy sledges and weird, thin men sharply outlined
on the pink snow. Travelling was rather more

_ pleasant in the sunshine; the air felt warmer, in spite

of the forty-three degrees of frost by my Fahrenheit
121

MY FIRST SLEDGE JOURNEY

thermometer, and I was able to take some notice of
the doings of the drivers. There was a full half mile
of our procession, and all the drivers seemed to be
shouting all the time. It is a habit with them; they
feel that the dogs must’ be told constantly what they
are to do; and a driver’s work consists very largely -
of an unending repetition of the orders to the dogs.
“ Ouk-ouk-ouk ” (go to the right) they say, or “ Ra-
ra-ra-ra-ra” (to the left); and if it is neither right
nor left it is a continual ‘ Huit-huit-huit ” (go straight
on). The leading dog has a good deal of responsibility
on its shoulders ; Geshe, my leader, had a trace about
forty feet long, and needed to be on the alert to pick
out her driver’s voice at that distance. When I
shouted to her she looked over her shoulder in a
surprised sort of way, as if to say “ Julius is in charge
of this team: what are you shouting for?” but when
Julius murmured a quiet “ Ouk,” away she curved to
the right with the whole team wheeling after her,
until his cry of “ Huit” checked her. Some of the
men were less favoured than we: I saw one of them
shortening his leader’s trace, and deposing the dog
by this means from its proud position, while the poor
brute whined and yelped and whistled as if it were
having a flogging; and not a few of the drivers were —
shouting themselves hoarse because their leaders were
stupid or disobedient or sulky.

‘Towards noon a man ahead of us shouted “ Ah”
at the top of his voice, and every driver took up the
cry. All the dogs stopped and lay down with one
accord, and all the drivers were busily heaving their
sledges on to one side. It was time to ice the runners !
It was a typical Eskimo idea, to do it all together, but —

there was sense in it. It would have been practically
122

MY FIRST SLEDGE JOURNEY

impossible for one sledge to stop while the others

went on, for the simple reason that the dogs will not
do it; besides, the Eskimo is a companionable soul,
and likes to have all these little things done in
company.

My drivers fished a sealskin bag from under the
doubled-up bearskin on which they had been sitting,
and after exchanging a few words Jerry went off to
disentangle the dogs again, while Julius made ready
to do the icing. He sucked a mouthful of the luke-
warm water in the bag and squirted it over the iron
shoe of each runner, running quickly along as he did
it and rubbing it smooth with the back of his leather
glove. The water turned to ice instantaneously at
the touch of the cold iron, but the men were taking
no risks—every sledge was turned so that the runners

were on the shady side, another instance of the natural

resourcefulness of the Eskimo. Most of the men had
brought jars or bags of water with them, and the few
who had not came to borrow from us because we had
the best supply. The borrower had a very simple
method of carrying the water : he just filled his mouth
and ran back to his own sledge, perhaps a hundred
yards or more.

Our sledge caravan got rather scattered as the
day wore on; in fact, with some of the men who

had only a few dogs it resolved itself into an earnest
race to do the sixty miles in the oneday. My drivers

took no notice of their hurry. “ Let them go,” they
said, “ we are all right, we shall get there.”
Just in front of us there was a curious erection in
the shape of a house on runners, a sort of square tent,
somewhere about the size of a Punch and Judy show

only not so tall, built on a sledge. This contained
123

MY FIRST SLEDGE JOURNEY

the driver’s wife, and his idea was that she should sit —
tight and not feel the cold. The idea was, no doubt,
an excellent one; but it had the disadvantage of —
boxing the lady up in the dark and depriving her of —
all view of the outside world, and consequently she —
was unable to take care of herself properly. We
came to a boulder-strewn beach, all ice covered, one —
of those places where the dogs try to go fast and are ©
constantly getting their traces caught round points of —
ice. Off went the dogs with a rush, and the man ~
after them to keep them straight. The sledge had —
nobody to guide it; it ran up the side of a great f
hummock and over it turned. My view of the ;
proceedings from twenty yards behind was of a
sledge upsetting and a heavily-padded and very ©
surprised-looking Eskimo matron being somersaulted ~
out of the top of her canvas house. She sat on the ©
hard snow, gazing ruefully at her sledge as it bumped —
along at a good ten miles an hour; but she managed ©
to collect her wits sufficiently to pick herself up and
make a flying leap on to my sledge as it passed her.
A mile further on we came on her husband sitting
on a lump of ice and puffing unconcernedly at his
pipe, while his dogs enjoyed a rest after their scamper.

Hebron is admirably placed for a sensational
arrival, The track turns sharply round a jutting
point of land and then runs for a straight mile and
a half over the frozen harbour to the Mission station ;
consequently the keen-eyed people saw us as soon as
we came round the point, and a good many of the
men and boys started over the ice at a run to meet
us, while the rest of the population collected on the ©
slope in front of the village to watch. |

From our point of view it was a relief to see the —
124 5

WALRUS TUSKS AND Ivory CARVINGS

Walrus tusks are very scarce, and consequently ivory-carving is almost a lost art among the
Eskimos. The picture shows men, women, sledges, dogs, a kajak, seals, birds, and various small
animals and tools made from walrus-ivory by the Okak Eskimos.

FOUND IN HEATHEN GRAVES

The heathen Eskimos always buried pots and tools with the dead. A large trough-shaped stone
lamp and a square stone cooking-pot, a harpoon head, a fishhook, a shoulder-bone for scraping
skins, and knives and arrows of flint. In the foreground are several toys found in a child's grave.

MY FIRST SLEDGE JOURNEY

houses among the snow and rocks after our cold day’s
travelling; and to them it was the biggest excite-
ment of the winter. You can imagine how they
would shout when they first saw our sledge ; the big
team of dogs and the three men on the sledge would
be enough to tell them at once that it was a
Kuropean. Presently we got within sound of their
shouting ; “ Kablundk, Kablundk,” they yelled, and
their outbursts came booming over the ice in the still
evening air. ‘ Amalo, amalo” (another) they roared,
as each sledge came round the point; and by the
time we reached them and looked back along the
track the thirteenth sledge was just in sight, with its
trotting little mannikin driver and its bunch of little
black dots of dogs, and the excitement was at fever
pitch. There had never been anything like this
before. Such a procession! It was a sight to re-
member ; a long, dull streak across the clean, bright
snow, alive with a series of crawling dots, the nearest
easily distinguishable as men and dogs, shouting and
yelping and racing towards us, the furthest mere
| black specks almost seeming to stand still. There
| was no mistake about the welcome; each sledge as
| it came up the slope was pounced upon by a laughing,
| gesticulating mob, who whisked it off, dogs and all,
| towards one or other of the Eskimo houses.
It is their way of inviting; seize the guest and
| take him along; and the boys ran in front of the dogs
crying “ Hau-hau-hau,” and leading them on until
at the sound of “ Ah” they drew up at the proper
door.

As for myself, I was shaking hands with a
bearded, frosted man, the Hebron missionary; and
| ascore of willing helpers were carrying my luggage

MY FIRST SLEDGE JOURNEY

into the house and rushing back for more, and helping
to loosen the dogs, and fold up the harness, and clear
the snow away from the runners, and store everything
away snug and safe for the night. iy
Hebron was a veritable land of dogs. Our pro-
cession had brought about a hundred and forty to add —
to the already large supply, and in consequence the
place swarmed with them. By daytime it was not |
so bad; I {could at all events see my way and avoid
treading on the sleeping brutes, though it was not }
very comfortable to be persistently followed by a”
dozen or more of the wolfish-looking creatures; but ©
by night it was awful. The dogs sang and snarled © !
and fought and held meetings of their own, and ©
prowled about in gangs in the moonlight, furtive and”
terrible. I do not suppose the Eskimos noticed the |
extra noise, or, for the matter of that, the extra ©
number of doggy slumberers around their doors; ~
but I feel pretty certain that the feeding was a matter
of concern to them. Sledge dogs are ravenously
hungry when feeding-time comes, and an ordinary ©
team can easily polish off the carcase of a seal at one ™
meal ; so that, though feeding-time comes only three ©
or four times a week, our band of Okak dogs must |
have made a big hole in the Hebron stock of seals. P|
Some of the people visited Okak later in the winter; _
a sort of complimentary return call, I suppose it was, |
though it smacked very much of getting their own ,
back. BA
About noon on the day after my arrival at |
Hebron the fourteenth sledge appeared. The owner ~
had been hauling firewood all day on the day before ~
we left Okak, and had started the trip with tired” |
dogs. He paid for his folly by having to camp at |
126 ¥

MY FIRST SLEDGE JOURNEY

“Half Way House,” a tumble-down hut thirty
miles from anywhere, without fire and with nothing
but a few scraps of dried fish for food. His poor dogs
had to go hungry : but they were workers, and came
trotting up the slope to Hebron in a most business-
like way. With them came Shergo.

Shergo was a remarkable character among dogs.

In the litter of plump black and white pups that
arrived in the late autumn, mothered by my beauti-
ful leading dog Geshé, there was a strange-looking
little yellow creature which we named Shergo
(meaning “by-and-by”). ‘To which of her doggy
ancestors she harked back, I cannot say; but she
Was an oddity, an utter freak. As soon as she
could toddle she began to wander. Any team that

appeared to be starting on a journey would do for

Shergo, and so she made a good many futile trips

to and fro with the wood sledges. Once she

thought the water sledge looked promising, and
went with that; but came back looking sad and
wise and disappointed—only three miles to run, and

a cold and shivery waiting for the tank to be filled,

and then the three miles home again.

Shergo was not content to follow behind: no,

if she choose to go with a team she took her place

among them, and trotted with a grotesque air of

\|determination, as if half the weight were on her bony

little shoulders. I was not surprised when I saw

her come trotting into Hebron with the fourteenth
sledge. She had attached herself to that because it

was the slowest, and the easiest for her short legs. I

tried to befriend her, and hustled her off to where

my own dogs were waiting for their food; but. she

preferred to take care of herself, and was generally
127

MY FIRST SLEDGE JOURNEY

present at all the feedings in the village, snatching
a precarious bone at each and fleeing with it to “i
solitary place. I got quite fond of Shergo, with a
pitying sort of fondness, but she remained entirely :
unresponsive. For a whole day she was missing,”
and I knew in my inmost mind that she had gone
with a sledge that had left at daybreak for the north. —
Right enough, she came home late at night, limping”
painfully among a sledge team that she had met on ]
the hills. “Take that miserable little thing back to
Hebron” is the translation of what Shergo heard —
on the Saeglek mountain pass, thirty miles north :
of Hebron, and she was ignominiously handed over |
and tied on the southward-bound sledge, and only
allowed to trot the last few miles because she was
nearly frozen. When I set out for Okak at the
end of my four days’ stay I sat on the sledge’
gripping Shergo in my arms; and she whined and
yelped to be allowed to go northward. Home we |
the word, however, and Shergo at last submitted.
Out of sight of Hebron I dropped her overboard
and she galloped forward to find a vacancy among
the big dogs that were pulling. She ran with them
all day, lagging sadly in the smooth places where
the pace was fast, but leading triumphantly up the
hills where the collar work had to be done, all the
time pretending to her queer little self that she was)
working. We reached Okak in eleven hours and ¢ ‘|
half, with Shergo trotting wearily in the van. |
She was home again—where she did not seem to }
want to be! She moped, and followed the wood |
|

sledges, but found no satisfaction; and a few day:
later her odd career was over, for I found her stif

and dead on the frozen sea beach.
128

)
|

CHAPTER X

AN uRGENT CaLtt—ALoNG THE IckE-EDGeE—Ovur GuipE—
A comic Toucu—SrtTarting Home—Over THE Lanp

HAD imagined Labrador to be an _ ideally
healthy land, a sort of extra-Arctic Switzerland,
_and I was disappointed to find that it did not quite
come up to my expectations. Europeans of sound
constitution enjoy good health, if one overlooks such
trifles as teeth coming loose as a result of too much
tinned food, and a touch of influenza when that
miserable complaint is in season. Influenza time
“comes twice a year, in midwinter (February) and
midsummer (August); and the Eskimos knuckle
under with one accord. When an epidemic begins
it seldom misses any of them; they all fall ill to some
extent, be it mild or severe, and so one learns to
‘view the onset of an infectious sickness with appre-
hension.

Happily, only a few of the actual fevers have
been known in Labrador, for if there were an out-
break of anything really fatal among the Eskimos
it would mow them down as a scythe mows grass.

It was a sudden and very real feeling of alarm
that made the Hebron missionary hurry over to
Okak with the message, “Come, my people are
dying!”

It was ten o'clock at night when he arrived, a
black night with a cloudy sky and a moaning wind

from the east ; and when I heard the rushing of feet
129 I

AN URGENT CALL

and the hum of voices outside, and the hammer,
hammer, hammer on the bolted door, I knew that —
something serious was stirring. I made haste to —
open, and in came my visitor, a trim-built, active, —
bushy-bearded little man, the very man for Arctic life. —
“ Come in, come in,” I said, and seized his hands.
“Come,” he said, “come, my people are dying.” _
This was no time for argument; his earnestness —
was real; and I turned to the crowd that surrounded —
the sledge where it stood on the snow at the foot of —
the steps, and shouted, “ Who will drive my sledge »
to Hebron ?” |
There was a roar of volunteers: ‘ Uvanga,
uvanga, uvanga” (I, I, 1); and I tried to choose the —
two who shouted first, and called them into the
house. We wasted very little time over discussing |
the situation; it was a case of urgency; there must —
be no delay. If we started at five in the morning, —
said the Eskimos, we could run the first ten miles in
the dark, and have the gathering light of the sunrise ;
to help us before we reached the first difficult pass.
This seemed sensible advice. “We will do so,” I i
told the men; “callus in good time so that we may i
be ready.” 5
«So let it be,” said the drivers, and they got up
to go home, perfectly cheerful although they knew —
that there was no rest for them, but they must spend —
the short night in making ready for the run. ;
Suddenly there came a roar from the crowd out- ;
side. ‘ Another sledge, another sledge,” they yelled;
and we heard their pattering feet trotting down the
track to meet the new comers. My drivers were o
like a shot, bounding down the steps to see what was
going on; and with that we set to on our supper.
130

AN URGENT CALL

In the middle of the meal the drivers came in,
this time with serious faces, “ Ajornarmat” (it
cannot be helped), they said; ‘‘the ice is broken.
Two of the Hebron people have followed the
missionary, and they say that there is a storm from
the east, and the ice was breaking behind them. To
travel is impossible.” This was a blow; but we had
a long talk over the matter, and decided at the least
to go in the morning and have a look at things.
Then we went to bed.

Five o’clock came all too soon: I was hardly
warm among the blankets before thumps resounded
on the door, and I crawled out of bed to find the
drivers dressed in their sealskins, the dogs in harness,
and the sledge standing ready for its load.

It was a bleak and dispiriting business, this pull-
ing on of cold clothes and boots by the lamplight;
but there was work ahead, and we were eager to be
at it; and by the time I was dressed the sledge was
ready, and a crowd of people were keeping the dogs
from running away. I thought that the men de-
served a good breakfast, so I called them into the
house and set them to work upon a big pannikin of
hot tinned mutton, with what looked like unlimited
bread and butter and weak tea. In an incredibly
short time I heard them going out, chuckling with

| Satisfaction, and muttering “ ’'Thankie, thankie,” and

I found that they had left a clear board behind them.
Probably if they had been travelling for themselves
they would never have bothered about break-
fast; a chunk of frozen seal-meat would have satis-
fied them; but here was a chance not to be had
every day, and I think they worked all the better

for it.
131

ALONG THE ICK-EDGE

It was anything but a pleasant morning, if morn- —
ing it could be called. It was pitchy black, with ©
never a star and no glimmer of moonshine; and only —
the fact that the dogs could smell their way along the ©
beaten track made it possible for us to start at all. —
Although the thermometer registered only twenty —
degrees of frost the cold was bitter in the extreme, —
for a raw air came moaning from the east, chilling us ©
through our heavy sealskins and making our cheeks |
and noses ache. We were even deprived of the bene- —
fit of an occasional trot alongside the sledge, for we —
could only see the faintest glimmer of the snow on ©
which we were running, and when I tried to warm |
my stiffening toes I kept tripping and stumbling over |
jagged points of ice until one of the men shouted |
‘« Sit still, or we shall be losing you.”

After that I sat still, and hoped for the morning. —

One gets to know what hope means at a time like ©
that. For two solid hours the agony went on, and ©
then a faint glimmer of grey began to show to the —
eastward: it changed to a dull red, sullen and lurid ©
in the morning haze, and we began to see the wide —
stretch of white ice beside us, and the dogs with their ©
spidery shadows, and a black and awful sea ahead ©
of us.

Then we stopped our sledge, and clustered”
together to consult. I seem to see it now, that little
knot of anxious men, with faces all frosted and features
but dimly discernible in the half darkness, standing ~
together on the frozen sea with the ice heaving and —
groaning under their feet, questioning and planning
to find a road to Hebron; and my pulse quickens as __
I seem to hear again the quick pattering of dogs’ feet —

in the gloom behind us, and to see the short, light”
132 *)

OUR GUIDE

sledge with its active little driver, and to hear that
cheery voice say “ Aksuse.” Johannes!

What was he doing? “Qh,” said Johannes, “I
heard you were going to Hebron, so I thought I
would come with you. I hear they have plenty of
walruses at Hebron, and I want some walrus skin
for new drags for my sledge. I think they will sell

| me some.” What a day to choose to go shopping !

I wonder if there was more at the back of that little
man’s mind. He joined our little conference, and
listened with nods to all that our drivers had to say.
They were for turning back. ‘There is no road,”
they said, “the ice is all broken there around the
headland across the bay. Let us turn homewards,”
“ A-a-a-tsuk,” said Johannes. “1 know a track

|| over the headland; let me see if we can get to it.”
|| He walked along the ice at the foot of the rocks,

now standing for a moment, now running a few steps,
now clinging to the stones, and we watched him in
silence. I admired that little Eskimo; to my mind
he seemed the very personification of dogged pluck ;

|| and as I stood shivering out there on the ice at the

foot of the cliffs of lonely Labrador, and watching
the tiny fur-clad figure as it moved steadily on to
where the big headland of Uivak loomed black and
stately, I said to myself. ‘There is a man; well may
he call himself one of the People.” He came back
presently, and said ‘“‘ We can do it ’—and we did it!
I think that of all my memories of life in Labrador

\the most vivid is the memory of that race along the

fringe of ice at the foot of the cliffs. On the left
the wall of rock rose steep; on the right the black
water churned and tumbled and ground the floating
pans of ice together: beneath us the thick sea-ice

133

OUR GUIDE

rocked and heaved with the force of the waves, and
here and there the water came swilling over. In
front was a racing sledge, with Johannes sitting on
it and yelling “‘ Hu-it (go on), hu-it, hu-it” to his
dogs; and our teams were following at safe inter-
vals, galloping as fast as their feet would carry them.
“Sit tight, sit tight,” said the drivers; and there we
sat, bowling along over the heaving ice. Sometimes
one of the men pushed out a leg to guide the sledge
round a bend or to check it where it seemed likely to
slip sideways: they said nothing ; just sat there and
chewed at their pipes, and left the dogs to follow the
voice that shouted unceasingly in front. At the
place where the guide led us on to the headland the
ice was broken away from the rock, and was rising
and falling with the swell. One moment it came
groaning up to the level of the land; the next it
sank away and left a leap of several feet. The dogs
went scrambling over, glad to get on to something
firm; but the drivers held the sledge back until the
ice began to rise, and then with a yell they started
the dogs again and bumped across the crack just a
it came up level. A second too soon or too late
would have meant smashing the front of the sledge
to splinters; and as we drew on to the land I looked
back and saw the ice dipping again behind us, and
my companion’s dogs coming on to take their
turn.

Johannes looked over his shoulder to see that we
were safe, and then started on foot, ahead of his dogs,
to show the track. It seemed a long way over the
headland, uphill and down, and always through soft
snow ; and all the morning that little man trotted on,

knee deep in snow, lifting his feet high to run the
134 7

A COMIC TOUCH

more easily, and keeping the same steady pace, hour
after hour, with the dogs hard at his heels. Some-
times he got on faster than the dogs, especially where
the snow was deep and they had practically to swim
because they could not get a foothold; and then
_Johannes would run from side to side with his head
down, to make them believe he was looking for
something, or he would pretend to scatter something
on the snow; and every time they saw him playing
_ this truly Eskimo game of make-believe they craned
their necks forward and whined and struggled in
_ their eagerness to catch him up.

When lunch-time came I had a laugh at my
companion’s plight. We sat side by side upon my
sledge to make the meal more sociable; and I think
we both contemplated with relish the bread and
meat that was thawing in our warmest pockets, for
the excitement of the trip had sent the hours slipping
by faster than we had thought, and hunger soon nips
in that cold air. But my bearded friend was frost-
bound; he could not open his mouth, because the
moisture of his breath had frozen his beard and
moustache firmly together. We carefully thawed
him with our hands, and so he managed to get a
bite; but the coffee froze him up again, and I am
afraid that I laughed a good deal at his predicament as
he cautiously poked thin chips of biscuit between his
| teeth, with the sledge rolling and jolting so that he
missed as often as he hit. But he had the laugh on
his side before long.

I was dilating upon the advantages of having a
travelling box to sit in, while he was in favour of
balancing on the top of the load like the Eskimos.

“If you have a travelling box,” said I, “you can
135

A COMIC TOUCH

drop all your loose belongings in without fear of —
losing them, and you have no need to cling on |
constantly ; you can loll in comfort and’”—but my —
words were cut short by a lurch of the sledge as it ©
passed over a buried boulder, and off I rolled into the ©
soft snow, where I remained sticking head downwards, —
with futile legs waving in the air. The drivers of —
the last sledge pulled me out and set me right way —
up; and there I sat, scraping the freezing snow out
of my neck and ears and hair, while everybody —
laughed. |

Early in the afternoon we lurched down a steep
place on to the sea-ice, and saw a clear, firm road in ©
front of us. :

Johannes came to my sledge for a talk, and told ©
me marvellous tales of the land over which we had —
crossed. “Nellojut nunangat” (that is the land ©
of the heathen), he said; “there is a big village of ©
iglos up there, all tumbling to pieces, and you can |
find flint harpoons and broken stone pots among the —
rubbish buried in the floors. No man has lived ©
there for a long time”—“ovatsiaro-pararluk” (a —
far-away by-and-by) was his picturesque way of ©
putting it—“and the people do not often travel that —
way. They are a little frightened, for it is strange —
and lonely among the tumble-down huts, and there ©
is a big heathen graveyard on the headland, where —
they used to lay the dead hunters down in their ©
stone graves in sight of the sea. But I have been ©
there, tautuk (I should like to go again); why, that ~
steep place that we came down is a river in the 4
summer, and the trout are so many in it that you can_
catch them with your hands in the pool under the

waterfall.” But Johannes’s story came to an end, for”
136

ARRIVAL AT HEBRON

his dogs were squabbling, and off he ran to terrify
them with his shouts.

As the afternoon wore on the dogs began to
tire, and Johannes trotted in front again; and
the rest of us sat on our sledges until the cold began

to chill us, and then ran alongside until weariness
made us sit down again. So, cold and weary by
‘turns, and at last cold and weary at the same time,
we drew near to Hebron; and every time I looked

ahead in the gathering twilight, and afterwards in
the bright moonshine, I saw a trim little figure clad
in silvery sealskins trotting tirelessly on, and a pack

of patient draggle-tailed dogs struggling gamely to

keep at his heels. So we came to Hebron in the
dark of the night, seventy-one miles over sea-ice and
snow-covered hills, and of the seventy-one miles
Johannes had trotted at least forty. Like ghosts
in the moonlight we drew up the slope towards
the sleeping village, with no sound but the grinding
of the runners, and the quick panting of the dogs
and the patter-patter of their feet.

_ The Hebron dogs smelt strangers; they woke
from their frosty beds in the snow porches, and ran
out to whine and yelp; and the village awoke with
a start. Lights flashed everywhere, and with a
furore of excitement the people turned out of their
reindeer-skin beds, and came helter-skelter out of
doors, pulling on clothes as they ran, and shouting
the word that they always use to betoken the coming
of a sledge—*« Kemmutsit, kemmutsi-i-it.” “ Nako-
mék, nakomék,” they shouted as they wrung our

wv TTC—TTM—

hands, ‘‘ Aksuse.” ‘They clustered round their own
missionary with evident affection; “ Aksunai,”’ they

said, “nakudlarpotit” (we are thankful to you) ; then
137

STARTING HOME

in their practical way they shouldered our rugs and —
boxes and led the way to the Mission house.
I need not say much about the two days I spent |
in Hebron. The people were in a state of great
excitement, ready to fall in with any plan, for typhus _
fever had broken out in two of the huts, and four ©
of the victims were already dead. ‘
I got the sick ones isolated, the infected huts
destroyed, and the clothes and bedding sunk into —
the sea through a hole in the ice, and the pestilence
spread no further. .
It meant the outlay of a little money on helping
those so summarily rendered homeless to set up
housekeeping afresh; but I shall always think
that the money was well spent—and I was sur-)
prised to find how little it costs to make an Eskimo 7
home. |
As soon as it was safe to go I started home, and7
this time my sledge was the only one, for Johannes 7
was still busy buying walrus hide. We set off at7
daybreak on a fine bright morning, with the whole}
population lined up to see us off or to run the first}
half mile with us. My drivers sat grinning on the)
sledge and let the Hebron men do the guiding; and)
if many hands make light work that sledge must}
have slid easily, for there were more hands to heave |)
it from side to side among the stones and to steady)
it down the sudden dips than could find room for
a grip. A horde of boys ran in front of the dogs,))
shouting and chattering and chasing one another;)]|
and the women and older folks on the bank behind?
us yelled “ Aksuse, aksuse” as long as we could hear
them. A good send-off is half the journey; and I

could see by the smiles on the drivers’ faces, as they
138 |

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s1ojejoeds 9y} pu ‘08 0} ploM dq} 1OJ BuNteM saovld I9y4} UL sie SsSOp sy, “Surusow Alive oy} ul UOIqayy Sutras] { Aguinofl aSpajs & jo J1¥4S OY],

INGAY ONILSHYULNI NY

Ne gis he > li 4

OL ——

STARTING HOME

complacently puffed at their pipes, that they felt the
elation as much as I did myself.
Our helpers dropped off one by one, and with a

| last wave of the hand we turned out of the bay and
| left Hebron hidden behind the rocks.

For nine hours we jogged on in the usual style of
an Eskimo sledge journey: that is to say, the drivers
shared the tasks as drivers do, one looking after the
dogs while the other guided the sledge, and some-
times changing places for a little variety; the dogs
played their usual trick of getting all tangled up, and
compelling us to stop every ten miles to disentangle
them; and I trotted and sat still by turns, flicking

the long whip-lash to and fro, and listening to the

chatter of the men as they talked of the landmarks
We were passing. We only saw one sign of life the
whole day long, and that was when we met a boy
with a sledge and six dogs twenty miles out of
Hebron. He was taking home a load of firewood,
and had come all that way because there are no trees
so far north as Hebron itself. He did not stop, but
just wheeled his dogs out of the way so as to keep
the two teams from getting tangled, and shouted
* Aksunai”’ as he passed. I suppose he had spent the
night in the woods.

Late in the afternoon we reached the frozen
river down which we had come from our crossing
of the headland, and the men became eager and
excited. In front of us was a smooth sheet of dark
grey ice, covering what had been black water when
We passed it a couple of days before. We halted
at the lumpy joining of new ice and old, and the
men went cautiously forward to try it. They walked

twenty or thirty yards, and then stopped and
139

OVER THE LAND

}
beckoned me to follow. It was with a little natural -
trepidation that I set my foot upon the pasty-looking c
surface; but I was not so heavy as the Eskimos, ©
and judged that what bore them would be safe for ;
me too. “ Kannoélungitok, immakka ” (it is-probably—
all right) were the first words they said when 1
joined them on the queer elastic ice, and one of them —
stamped his foot and set the whole field shuddering. 4
It rocked and swayed as we walked to and fro, andi
I wondered how the heavy sledge would fare round | 4
the steep face of the headland. “Is it safe for the |
sledge?” I asked them. “ Immakka” (probably—it j
may be), was their answer. ‘ Are we to travel over
the ice or over the land,” said I; “what do you
think.” “ Issumangnik” (just as you please) said |
the drivers; and that was as much as I could get |
them to say. To my mind they seemed none toc i
sure about it, and I felt that there was nothing a
be gained by taking a needless risk. ‘‘ Over the land,”
I said, and with a nod of agreement and never a
word the men turned cheerfully to help the sledge
up the steep wall. The dogs clawed and slipped”
and whined as they struggled up the frozen brook,
and the drivers hauled and heaved at the groaning”
sledge, while I clung to it in a hopeless effort to”
keep my feet. The little flexible feet of the
Eskimos, with their tight-fitting and supple sealskin
We found our tracks of two days before in the sof |
snow on the land, and the dogs put their noses dowr ;

boots, seemed to grasp the waves and roughnesses
and went whimpering along, distressed because they
140 ba

in the slippery fresh-water ice, and up the two
willing fellows clambered, shoving the nose of the
sledge this way and that to give it the best road

OVER THE LAND

could go no faster. It was not till we had raced
down the slope to the ice again, and were round the
bay that we had skirted in so hazardous a fashion
under Johannes’s guidance, that my drivers stopped
the dogs and turned to look once more at Cape
Uivak, where he rose stiffly from the wide plain of
new ice. “Kannoélungitok, immakka,” said one
to the other; and then, turning to me with a smile,
“If we had not had you with us we should have
-erossed the new ice. It is probably all right—for
Eskimos.”

_ They had been quite content to face five hours’
hard work over the headland instead of five miles’
clear fast run round its foot: risks to them were
nothing—they knew the ice—but they would not
even seem to take me into danger.

_ And they called to the dogs and drove on,
homewards.

141

CHAPTER XI

A ProvipenTiAL Curck—Sorr SNow—S.tepee Dogs.

travellers know. The winter weather is ake
treacherous, and however carefully one may study
the barometer, and however wise and experienced’
the drivers may be, storms may arise and snow may
fall at the shortest notice. ;

We made our start at five o’clock on a calm, cold
morning, with a cloudless sky above us all twinkling;
with stars. It seemed an ideal travelling morning;
the dogs were brisk and in the best condition, and!
the track was as good as a winter track can be.
We had every prospect of making a fast run, and)
when the sun rose I had my first taste of the real
pleasures of travel. ql

There was an exhilaration about the keen, frosty)
air and the crackling snow, and I thoroughly enjoye d
the alternate running for warmth and resting on the
sledge in the cold sunshine. :

In less than six hours we reached the neck of
land that stands half way between Okak and Hebron,
and climbed the steep slope at a pace that took my
breath away. The drivers seemed quite at their
ease; as a matter of fact, Eskimos are so used te
running and climbing that they never seem to pant
or lose their wind however hard they are pushed.

Running is part of their nature.
142

A PROVIDENTIAL CHECK

We stopped on the summit to clear the dogs
for the run down the steep slope that leads to the
Hebron ice, and as we looked before us we saw a
cloud drifting quickly from the north, and lying
low upon the wide bay. One driver looked at the
other: they shook their heads. “ Ajornarmat”’ (it
cannot be helped), they said.

“What is the matter?” I asked. |

** See that cloud: that is attuarnek” (the northern
storm).

We held a brief discussion of the situation, and
made up our minds to run for shelter. ‘ Jannekunut”
(to John’s house), said the men, and they shouted
the dogs on to their legs again and we went whizzing
down the hill. And all the time there was running
im my mind the phrase out of the Bible, “ A little
cloud, no greater than a man’s hand.” At first sight
that little cloud would not have frightened me, but
the drivers knew it; and when I looked again after
the exciting race down to the ice, I saw a heavy
grey wall coming tearing along to meet us. In a
few minutes it was upon us, and there had begun
one of the most anxious hours that I have ever
spent. I sat with my back to the wind, for I dared
not face it, and even through my thick sealskin
the wind cut bitterly. Each time I turned to look
I saw the same sight; a wall of frozen snow beating
ainst us, a taut line stretching away to where the
ogs were lost to sight in the drift, and two plump,

-clad, and frosted figures, clinging to the sledge

running with heads down, guiding the sledge
ith an instinct that did not fail them even in the
wful “‘ attuarnek ” which swallowed us up and blotted

out the landmarks, and drowned every sound in its
| 143

A PROVIDENTIAL CHECK

terrific roar. How the men found their way I aa
not know, but suddenly we went bumping up '
bank and left the storm behind us. In anothe /
a
dil
|

minute we heard the howling of dogs, and when
the sledge went grinding over a patch of wood
chippings I knew that a house must be near. Sure
enough the dogs stopped on the sheltered side o
a wooden house nearly buried in snow, and one
of the men shouted to me “Go in—John’s house.”
I thumped the thick of the snow off my shoulders)
and made for the porch, which was, of course, f f
of dogs; but when I “shooed” them out of the wai
I was astonished to find that they were all in their
harness. I pulled the seal-hide thong that lifte
the latch, and went into the house. There sa
John, clad in all his travelling furs, with a dejecte
head bowed upon his hands. He looked up in an
apathetic sort of way, but his look changed in
instant to one of utter consternation, Then he
jumped to his feet and shouted for his daughter
and the two of them stared, and wrung my hand;
and asked how ever I had managed to get there
My side of the story was soon told, and then ca me
John’s: one of his household had just met with
an accident, and he had harnessed his team to g@
to Hebron, the nearest Mission station, for hel
when the storm came up and drove him indoor
Between us we managed to set things to rights:
and all the evening John sat ruminating over
strange happenings of the day; and he put my
own thoughts into words when he said, “
Hand of God is very near us on the Labrade
It is only a travelling incident, but I co

not help thinking of his words as we toil
144

|
|
hi
a
|
:

SOFT SNOW

through the soft snow to Hebron on the following
morning.

_ On the way home from Hebron, a few days later,
we had to cross Nappartok Bay, a place with an un-
enviable reputation. No sledge driver will take upon
himself to guarantee a fast run if he has Nappartok
Bay to cross, for there the snow is always soft; and
there, on my way home from Hebron, I had my
first taste of the real quality of a soft track. As soon
as we left the land, the dogs began to wallow in the
clinging snow, and the sledge nearly came to a stop.

The poor brutes seemed to be actually swimming,
unable to reach the bottom of the snow and get a
foothold, and floundering as they tried to lift their
legs above the surface for another step. By a sort of
instinct they dropped into line one behind the other,
30 that each dog had the advantage of the trampled
jtrack of the ones before it. I felt most sorry for the
leading dog, as she went shuffling and whining along
with nose down and tail up, but Jerry slipped on his
snowshoes and tramped ahead of her to give her some
sort of a road to follow. It was a curious sight: the
trudging little Eskimo, with his feet wide apart,
Swinging the big rackets round and planting them
one in front of the other, and behind him the dogs,
marching in a narrow furrow, and looking like a long
line of waving tails.

Sometimes the snow was too deep for them; they
ooked round and whined, as if to say “ Do you really:
mean us to go on? Why not camp until it is
better?” but Julius said “ Hu-it,” and on they went,
tying their hardest and whistling with distress.

In one place even Julius’s “‘ Hu-it,” repeated over

and over again, failed to move them, ges they
145

SOFT SNOW .
struggled and tugged, and though the men heaved
the sledge from side to side to set the runners free
from the clinging snow; they simply wallowed, and
I wondered what was going to be the outcome. The
men were equal to the emergency; no doubt it wa
an everyday kind of occurrence to them ; they went on
snowshoes for twenty. or thirty yards, and trampec
to and fro to harden a track, and then came back and)
urged the dogs to try again, and so the sledge crawle
on. I slipped on my snowshoes and tried to go with
them, but after a mile or two I was absolutely,
beaten; my legs refused to be lifted, and once I fell
and had to be ignominiously rescued from a sea off
powdery snow by the ever-watchful Julius. I
seemed a shame to sit upon the sledge while the dog
were toiling so hard, but there was nothing else fo
it; so I sat still and tried not to think about the poor
dogs, though really, when I saw the sledge sinkin
above the cross-pieces, with its nose shoving a grea
snowball in front of it, I had not the heart to sit
down. I jumped off, and immediately sank
made the dogs’ work all the harder by clinging to
the side of the travelling box and nearly upsetting
the whole thing. In the softest places, when the big)
snowball grew between the runners in front, the meni
came back and kicked it away, and lifted the ne
of the sledge up for a fresh plunge, and yelled “ Hu-ity
hu-it, hu-it” until the dogs went off with a scamper—
a burst of energy that only lasted for ten yards, whe
the nose was under the snow again and needed all the
efforts of both men and dogs to make it plough fo
ward ever so slowly. It is not more than ten mil
across Nappartok Bay, but we took ten and a

hours to cross it; and after that crossing I no longer
146

|
E{
/
P|

anal

SOFT SNOW

wondered why the old missionaries used the word
‘“mauja” (soft snow), in their translation of Bunyan’s
Pilgrim’s Progress, to picture to Eskimo minds the
plight of the pilgrim when he got into the Slough
of Despond. What better word could they have
used for the clinging, sinking waste in which the
traveller's feet sank as he made his weary way
towards the wicket gate? What word more vivid
than “mauja” to a people who spend their lives
among the snow and ice and rocks of the frozen
Labrador ?

It is surprising to find how soon the dogs forget
e “mauja.” Once through it they are quite willing
to trot along at their usual five miles an hour, and
even after their ten and a half hours of labouring across

Nappartok Bay they were able to run the thirty miles
to Okak in good time—and without any whipping.
Eskimo drivers do not believe in flogging tired dogs:
It only takes the spirit out of them, they say, and
though I have seen lazy dogs and sulky dogs and
disobedient and quarrelsome dogs I felt glad that the
men did not treat them cruelly: a dog’s life is hard
enough without that. The first thing was always to
shout at the dog—* ‘Tawny ” or “ Glove” or “ Lamp”
t whatever its name happened to be; and it was
amusing to see how the dog that heard its name
tightened up its trace and tried to efface itself by cross-
ng over to another place in the team. If it was only
| matter of laziness a word was enough, but when there

was a doggy quarrel afoot the reminder was soon for-
zotten and great hulking “ Lamp” would soon be back
in his place, snapping at his neighbour’s heels. Then
ne driver would say to the other “ Una-arluk ” (that

wwful creature), and without further ado he reached
147

for the whip and ran alongside the sledge trailing
lash on the snow.

The dogs looked over their shoulders and yelped,|
and hurried and strained to get along as fast as!
possible, while the prospective victim made wild)
efforts to hide himself among the others. {

It was useless: with an indescribable sweep of,
the arm the driver sent the thirty feet of walrus-hid
lash hissing through the air, and with a sharp flick
caught the right dog a sounding crack on its flank
There was a yell, and the poor dog drooped its tai
and cowered on the snow, crawling along with ¢
shrill whistling noise in anticipation of another smac
Once was enough! But there are hard-heade
villains among dogs, that will not take the well
meant hint of a single crack of the whip; for ther
there is a special flogging in store. ‘The driver rur
forward and grasps the offender’s trace, and hauls if
nearer to the sledge. And so the dog must rur
only a couple of yards or so from the man with th
whip, and the very terror which the hauling bae
inspires is a sufficiently wholesome lesson for mo:
dogs. ‘Ten minutes of running on a shortened trac
generally works a cure, but if this broadest of hinté
seems useless three or four sound strokes of the las
will send the poor dog back to his senses with a jerk
and when, at the end of the whipping, his trace #
unhitched and he is allowed to trot forward to hil
place, he is a marvellous worker for an hour @
two—trace always tight, shoulders always forward
with none of that shambling, make-believe, slacl
trace work that lazy dogs are apt to do. In the bes
of teams there are always one or two dogs running

slack, and the drivers let it pass so long as the dog
148 f

SLEDGE DOGS
i
rE

SLEDGE DOGS

take turns at it, because it gives the team the chance
of resting by turns from the weight of the pulling.
A dog that must work all the time soon wears out,
and it always seemed better to me and my drivers to
take fifteen or seventeen dogs for a long trip and
maintain a good pace easily, than to force a team
of ten or eleven to do the work, as some of the
Eskimos do.
_ Good dogs do not need the whip to make them
rot, and my drivers were generally content to shout
it them or to flick the lash to and fro as a reminder.
When the dogs were tired one or the other of the
nen used to run in front of them. Often the men
must have been as tired as the dogs themselves, but
10 matter; with the utmost cheerfulness big heavy
fulius would take off his sealskin dicky and tuck it
inder the lashings of the sledge, and run ahead as if
ae were a mere boy instead of the staid father of a
>i family, and in a fair way to be a grandfather
sfore so very long. When he had run enough for
is purpose he would come back to the sledge for a
Boke while the other man took up the running, and
oO @ between them they used to hurry the team over
e last ten or fifteen miles of a day’s trip in two or
hi se hours, and sometimes land me at the snug
‘warmth of a proper house instead of dooming me to
‘im uncomfortable apology for rest in a snow hut—
i! h ough the snow hut would have served them very
ve if they had been alone. It was an odd dance’
: hat brought the man back to the sledge from his
\|lace in front of the dogs: it would have been use-
; PSS to try to get to one side and allow the dogs to
{0 past, for the dogs follow the runner with an

( bsolutely blind perseverance ; accordingly, the only
149

SLEDGE DOGS
thing to do was to stand still, and compel the dogs :
to run past by shouting at them. There was alway:
the same little hesitation on the part of the dogs
the man stood, and they expected to stand too. Ne
“ Hu-it, hu-it, hu-eeet,” yelled the driver—perhaps h
flicked the whip across the heads of the team—an
the frightened dogs ran on, while the runner bege
to jump nimbly over the traces. He pranced uj
and down, always seeming just to save himself fron
falling, and sat down with a jerk as_the sledge over
took him. |

Once I tried this characteristically Eskimo tri
and nearly paid dearly for my rashness. I
been running ahead of the dogs, and stopped wi
a shout of “ Hu-it” which the drivers took up.
a moment I was among the tangle of traces, ar
found that it takes skill to jump them successful
I hopped and skipped with all my energies, but
had not the knack of the thing, and down I wel
with my feet caught in a jumble of seal-hide thong

The dogs were on me with a pounce, and ¢
next moments were a blurred impression of snarlin,
fighting dogs and shouting, kicking drivers. A wh
cracked, and the dogs spread in terror, while t
men tried to calm them with deep-toned “ Ah’s
and after that I always carried the whip with 1
when I wanted to run ahead. 7

Dogs begin to get very ravenous when they ha
run thirty or forty miles, and are ready to eat hil :
less palatable than human beings. Once, I rememb
my fur cap blew off, and that was the last I saw
it. There happened to be a sledge following clk
behind us, and the dogs stopped to have a merryys

little scuffle over the dry morsel that a chance wi
150 |

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JO 9B¥10j 0} Yo] ov Ady? ,,‘poos ou ‘yIOM OU,, Jo a[dioursd 9y1 UO ‘19UIUINS UT Inq ‘Y2eM B SEUIT] INO} IO 9914} Paj B1B SSOp aspajs 9y} J9qIUIM UT

ONIHSIY SOOCM

SLEDGE DOGS

had blown in their way. It was all over in a moment,
and probably one of them had swallowed my cap
| whole, so quickly was it demolished.

One of my drivers, good thoughtful fellow, in-
| sisted on lending me his cap in spite of my protests.
“Me all right,” he grinned. “ Eskimo brains, no
freeze, plenty of hair; you, Kablunak brains, freeze
very quick”; and perhaps he was talking sense, for
the Eskimos very seldom wear caps except for
travelling ; they walk about on the bitterest, snowiest
days with their heads uncovered except for the thick
thatching of coal-black hair.

One thing that we saw on nearly every journey,
and that always set the dogs off at a gallop, was
the Arctic raven. That seems a solitary bird, for we
nearly always saw one only. The great black bird
used to stand on the snow, cocking its head this way
and that, and perhaps stalking a step or two in an
unutterably grave manner; and the dogs, as soon
as they caught sight of it, were off with futile haste,
each striving its utmost to get there first, and all
held in fixed order by their traces. The leading dog
had the best chance, but the raven had a wary old
eye upon the danger: it waited until the dogs were
within a few feet of it, and from the sledge it looked
as if it were caught, and then with leisurely flappings
betook itself off to a fresh stand, to wait with un-
ruffled calm for a repetition of the same performance.

I have no doubt that the raven would have been
demolished, bones, feathers, and all, at a single gulp,
if it had waited another second ; but it never waited.
I never saw a driver shoot at a raven, though they
must be tempted at times, for I have known ravens’

Wings to be used for cleaning out the stove-pipes.
151

SLEDGE DOGS

There seems to be no limit to a dog’s appetite,
especially if it be a hungry travelling dog. During
one stay at Nain a man came to me with a very

a
£
rueful countenance to ask whether I had any spare ‘
i
‘

harness with me. He had followed my sledge from
Okak, and wanted to get back again if only he coule
be assisted out of the plight in which his dogs had
landed him. It appeared that the harness was all
wet when he reached Nain, so he hung it over th 2
roof of the hut in which he was lodging, expecting’
it to dry in the wind. In the morning it was a
gone—in more senses than one, not a trace remained
—and his dogs were slinking about the village with)
a furtive air and a very well-fed appearance. He)
seemed hurt by this ungrateful behaviour. “And I
fed them, too,” he said; “I gave them half a seal for’
their supper.” It was only the wolfish nature of}
the dogs that made them devour the harness, and]
not hunger merely, for I am sure that the man did)
feed them as he said. In fact, I have never known)
an Eskimo go in to his own food and rest after a)
day’ s travelling, without first unharnessing and feed="
ing his dogs. It is a custom of the people. |
Sometimes the dogs have to work on very poor’
food, especially i in the springtime, when the reindeer)
hunt is over and the seals have not yet come. Then) i
the dogs have to help in the spring cleaning, if
may use such an expression; at any rate, when a
the people have got new reindeer skins for beds it ql
seems quite the thing to chop the old bed-skins up)
for dog-food, and the dogs gulp this queer fodder ‘
down merrily enough if it is moistened with a little)
rank oil. Two or three meal-times a week 1 és
enough for the sledge dogs; the Eskimos say that a
|

152

SLEDGE DOGS

over-feeding makes them savage. They are un-
pleasant brutes, handsome in their way, but un-
friendly and sly; easily mastered by firmness, but
ready to take advantage of any weakness. I have
known an Eskimo child to be killed by the dogs,
because she met a pack of them when she was alone;
and a poor woman who fell in a fit was pounced
upon and half devoured before help could arrive.

I was always wary of the dogs, and was very
‘glad of those tough seal-hide knee-boots to protect
my legs when I stumbled among the sleeping brutes
that filled the porches of the huts, My plan was
to poke them to wide-awakeness with a stick, and
then, with a shout of “Hu-it” (a very expressive
sort of “ Get out of the way”) march boldly through
them. One evening a man came to my room and
said, “ Shall I shoot my dog?”

66 Why ? o 72
_ “Because it bit your boot; and the people have
a rule that a dog which has bitten must be killed.”

- As the dog had only tasted boot, with which
flavour it must have been well acquainted, I spared
it; but if it had tasted me, nothing short of shooting
it would have satisfied the owner.

_ Itisacustom of the people: the dangerous dog
must die.

_ Kristian was rather relieved when I acquitted
his dog. I had trodden on its tail in a dark porch,
nd its snap at my boot was by way of a natural
response to stimulation. I explained all this to
Kristian. ‘Let the dog live,” I said.

Kristian gravely said, “’Taimak (so let it be): it
is my best dog.”

153

CHAPTER XII

My Drativers—Two Jonatruans—My Box—Oxup Ko.ieK Gets |
Caucut—A Snow Hovse—A Wortr—A Ninety-Mitze Tror— ©
A PartTrRIDGE ON THE Roap—My Frozen Noss

FTER a little experience of Eskimo sledge ~
A travelling, I decided that I should get on |
better if I chose two men as permanent drivers. —
So I appointed Julius and Johannes to the position.

Julius is a big, burly fellow, not more than five”
feet three or four inches tall, but with a magnificent
pair of shoulders. He must weigh fourteen or
fifteen stone, and can lift almost anything. ‘To see”
him hoist my big sledge this way and that, a weight”
that I could hardly shift at all, was a constant”
delight to me. The big man did it so easily, and)
always with the same gentle smile on his broad”
face; he never bothered to clench his teeth and”
draw deep breaths, he simply lifted things as if the
were nothing. “Yes,” said I, “that is the man for
me.” So Julius became head driver. It was a wis
choice: there was never any trouble while he was in)
charge, and the sledge never upset or ran away as)
sledges sometimes do.

Johannes is a sort of pocket edition of Julius
He has the same delightfully happy smile, whateve
there is to do, and the same willing energy; but
the man himself is small and slim, and active as)
an eel. Each of these men possesses an Eskimo)

surname, and the names just happen to fit them,
154 |

MY DRIVERS

Julius is called Kakarsuk, which means “a little
mountain”; and Julius’s weight was a matter of
concern to the dogs. When he sat down on the
sledge they all used to look round to see what the

matter was, and Johannes would laugh and say,

«No wonder they are surprised: they have to pull
a mountain now.” Julius used to grin at this

_ pleasantry, and then say with a chuckle, “ Yes, they
don’t mind when you jump on, for it is only like

sticking a pin into the sledge”; Johannes’s name is
Merkorarsuk, which means “a little needle.” This

‘was an endless joke on our journeys. If the dogs

were running slowly, it was ‘ Get off, old mountain,
they can’t pull you”; and if Johannes happened to
feel inclined to trot alongside a little, Julius would
say with a chuckle, “ Your weight doesn’t make
any difference, little pin.” After these passages

_they both used to ruminate over the joke, storing

it up as something good to tell when they got

home.

My drivers soon became firm friends. ‘They even
got as far as calling one another Jonathan. “Just
tighten that dog’s trace, Jonata.” “All right,
Jonata.” “Run in front a little way, Jonata.”
* Ahaila (yes), Jonata,” and so on. When we
were making our camp in the woods, Julius some-
times came to me and said, “ Where’s Jonata ?”

“ Over among those trees, I think; he went to
look for water.”

Off he would go, to look for Johannes. Mean-
while Johannes might have wandered round and
reached camp from some other quarter. His first
question invariably was, ‘“‘ Where’s Jonata ? ”

One night, when we were snugly fixed in our
155

TWO JONATHANS

snow hut, I asked them, “ Why do you call each
other Jonata?” | a
Julius took a few good puffs at his pipe and —
answered “ Illanaréngnermut ” (because of friendship).
“Then why not call yourselves David and —
Jonathan?” said I; “one be David and the other
be Jonathan ?”
“No,” said he, “Jonathan was the friend”; and ©
Johannes nodded in approval. I said no more; and ~
Jonathan they both remained as long as I knew ~
them.
“ Friends ”—yes, and my friends, too. |
Let me put in a good word for my Eskimo
drivers. 3
I have travelled hundreds of miles with those ©
two men, uphill and down, over mountain passes and
across the rugged surface of the frozen sea; I have ~
camped in snow huts with them,|forty miles from the —
nearest other human being; I have taken them from _
their homes and their hunting at the shortest notice;
I have pushed them on when some emergency called |
though I knew they would rather rest; I have kept
them back when they would gladly have made a ~
start; through winter storms, and worse, through ~
awful winter rains, we three have gone together;
and never) a cross word, never a complaint, never a
grumble, have I heard from them. Rough Eskimos, —
both, fond of raw meat and rancid oil, but capable of —
gentleness and affection and absolutely worthy of the ©
trust I placed in them. It was not all pleasure for —
those two men. I have seen them cold and wet
many a time; I have seen them risk their lives a
time or two; but they loved those old journeys. |

Little Johannes wrote to me a few months ago, —
156 =

GESHf, AN ESKIMO SLEDGE DoG

The leading dog in the author’s team. She runs on a trace about
thirty-five feet long, and leads the team any way at a word from the
driver. Sledge dogs are handsome but treacherous, and have been
known to kill and eat helpless people and children.

My DRIVERS

Johannes and Julius in their winter furs. Most travellers take two drivers,
one to control the sledge, the other to drive the dogs, and to help one
another in the difficult task of building a snow house for the night’s shelter.
All the Eskimos are marvellous pathfinders.

MY BOX

a queer letter scrawled in pencil on a big sheet of
foolscap. ‘The spelling is weird in places, because he
puts things as they sound to his Eskimo ears.
“Immale,” he writes. “Oh that we were travelling
again.”

Julius was my head driver and looked after the
sledge. Johannes looked after everything else. I
cannot enumerate his duties; he was on the look-out
for them all day long, and did them as they
cropped up. Amongst other things he elected
himself my “nurse.” That is to say, he was always

| on the look-out to make himself useful in some little

personal way. Suppose that one of my boot-strings

| came undone. “ No, no,” says Johannes, “ uvangale
| —let me do it—keep your gloves on; you have
| English hands; they will freeze. I have Eskimo
| hands.” And on the long, weary hours of the dark
| evenings, when the dogs toiled slowly on and the
| wind nipped painfully, little Johannes was always
|mear, trotting from one side to the other, racing
| forward to disentangle an unlucky dog and coming

back to ask “ Are you cold? See that rock? Two
hours to Nain. Anandk (splendid), ai?”

On one of those runs through threatening weather
I overheard a little conversation between the drivers.
We were climbing a pass. The two men were
walking beside the nose of the sledge, guiding it
between the rocks, while I followed behind.

“It is heavy up here,” said one ; “ I wish we could
go faster.”

** Ai-ai,” said the other. ‘I wish the doctor’s box
could get off and walk.”

* Unét,” was the answer; “that box is medicine

for the sick folks ; we are helping them.”
157

MY BOX

Eskimo drivers always look askance at any
unusual load. They expect to take food and sleep-—
ing-bags and a box of clothing; but to take a big box ©
besides was something new. Hence their remarks.

I once made my drivers almost protest. We
halted for a night at a trading station, and after
a pleasant evening in the storekeeper’s room the
good man, our host, asked me to take on a small”
box for a friend of his at the next post.

“It is only a small box,” he said, “and will not”
take up much room.” 7

I assented willingly, and thought no more of it. —

My drivers looked at me rather reproachfully in
the morning when the small box was brought out.
It was “only a small box,” but it was a box o
gun cartridges, and weighed like lead. They did ne
say anything, but I can imagine their thoughts 2
the day wore on.

It was a pleasure to travel with the same twe
drivers because they got so entirely used to oné)
another. They worked together like two parts of
machine.

There are plenty of thrills on a sledge journey,)
and coasting downhill is one of them. As soon ag}
we began to descend, the drivers moved to the fron
of the sledge, and sat one on each side. Their main)
concern seemed to be to keep the sledge from
ning away. ‘They dug their heels into the snow, and)
tugged and shoved to keep the track; and all th
while they were yelling and screaming at the dogs
which raced on in front in a frightened effort to ge
out of the way.

As the pace grew faster the drivers put on the

brakes.
158

OLD KOLLEK GETS CAUGHT

On my very first journey I had noticed two heavy
loops of walrus hide, tucked under the lashings at
the front of the sledge, and had wondered about
them. I soon knew what they were. Looped over
the front of the sledge runners they make powerful
drags. One is enough to check the pace on any
ordinary hill, while with two the sledge will stop on
slopes that look quite alarming. It is only seldom
that the drivers really let the sledge go, because they
dare not risk a smash over an ice-hummock or a
wave of frozen snow.

I have had breathless rushes on some of the
beaten tracks, where the men shout the dogs to one
side, or unfasten them and leave them to follow, and
the sledge whizzes down in a whirl of powdery snow
\Kicked up by the drivers’ heels. There are very few
hills smooth enough for this kind of work. For the
most part the winter passes follow the beds of
mountain streams, where jagged rocks and awkward
jturns abound. But if the pace is not often thrilling,
he ride is crammed with adventure; and many a
me as I clung to the sledge, bumping and heaving
iown the slope, have I marvelled at the skill of my
rivers. The two men think like one, and the sledge
imply obeys them.

Julius, being the stronger man, has the lion’s
hare of the actual guiding; Johannes is always
eady to run forward tothe dogs. “ Kollek, Kollek,”
€ would shout, “keep to the track: keep to the
rack, you rascal, MRa-ra-ra-ra, go round that rock !”
ollek was a foolish dog; his place was the outside
ne in the team, and there he would be! Hedid not
peem to like running with the others; and not all

she shouting in the world would bring him into line
159

And round that rock he would not go. Perhaps he
was in a brown study: perhaps he was sulky:
straight on he went, outside dog right enough, bu
the wrong side of the rock. Now came the trouble
Away rushed Johannes to lift the trace over; bu
before he could reach it Kollek was whining and)
whistling with terror as the weight of the sledge
drew it tight and dragged him backwards. Poor
dog! he planted his feet as firmly as he could on the
frozen snow, and did his best to withstand the:
strain; but the sledge went calmly on, and Kollel
slithered frantically backwards. In a twinkling he
was plump up against the rock, and then he could go)
no further.
There was a twang as of a giant fiddle-strix
when the trace broke, and Kollek was free. Th
trace trailed limply behind, while the dog scurried)
away to his place in the team. *
There he trotted, with shoulders forward and nosé
down, looking as if he were pulling as hard as
best dog in the country, but sly old rascal, lookin;
back every now and again to see if Johannes wa
after him with the whip. |
I never saw my drivers do much work with th
whip. ‘They always had one with them, but used |
mostly for turning the team. Eskimo dogs are ofte
disobedient; they sometimes take absolutely n@
notice of the orders which the drivers shout at them)
and when our dogs behaved like that Johannasj
would give them a gentle hint by lashing the whip
over the snow. That brought them to their senses)
For a few minutes they would have obeyed @

whisper.
160

A SNOW HOUSE

Another great advantage which I gaine by
aking the same two drivers on all my journeys, was
nat I never needed to be anxious about a night’s
shelter. “What will you do if we cannot reach
nome?” I asked Johannes one afternoon, as we
aboured through the drifting snow in the teeth of
an Arctic storm.

| Stop and build a snow house,” said he.

| “Will you be able to find good snow in this
weather ?”

| “Sua (what)?” said Johannes, with a look of
surprise. ‘Find good snow? I can always find
good snow.”

| Johannes has plenty of faith in himself—and I
fave never known him fail. He was not bragging ;
he made a matter-of-fact statement, like the thorough
uskimo he is. He succeeds because it is his nature,
and because he always keeps his eyes open.

Some people are not so happy in their drivers.
One good man set out to travel with two inex-
serienced young Eskimos. When the time came to
puild the snow house, they made the alarming dis-
ery that the snow knives had dropped off the
ledge somewhere on the road, and—*“ Ajornarmat ”
| [it cannot be helped) said the Eskimos. The traveller
‘In that instance might have lost his life if he had
ot been an unusually careful man. He had a little
ent among his travelling paraphernalia. He had
ten been teased for ‘‘ making the dogs drag a tent
ound after them,” and he confessed that he did not
i }hink he would ever use it. But it saved his life.
As it was, he found it too cold for sleep, and spent
1 miserable night shivering in his sealskin sleeping-

ag.

161 4

A SNOW HOUSE

The Eskimo drivers snored peacefully on the
snow floor ! i

One plucky little Yorkshireman had an even
worse experience. He had snow knives, but his)
drivers could not find snow hard enough for building.
They dug trenches in the snow, and slept in the
open! Providentially there was no wind, but nm
thermometer outside the hospital at Okak, only,
thirty miles north, registered sixty degrees of frost;
so that one man at least can boast of sleeping in th
open air at somewhere near that temperature, anc |
taking no harm. As a rule this sort of experience
is beyond the endurance of a European constitus
tion. |

Johannes was very distressed about it. “ Kap-
pianarmék” (how awful), he said; “my namesake
sleeps in the open air! I will go with him when hé
travels back to Hopedale, and then he will be sure of
a snow house !” i

On those journeys of mine I got quite used té
seeing Johannes work himself up to snow house pitch’
When the afternoon light began to grow dull, hé¢
pulled out one of the big snow knives that he kept
under the lashings of the sledge. A fearsome-looking
knife it was, with a bone handle and a blade a yar
long. Brandishing this, he trotted from side to sidé
prodding here and jabbing there. He was “ finding
snow.” 5

Soon Julius stopped the sledge, and they held i
consultation. .

Then the building began. It was generally on +
gently sloping hillside, for there the snow hardens tht
best; and Julius told me that a number of place!

are famous among the Eskimos for good hard buildin
162

A SNOW HOUSE

snow, and travellers do their best to reach one of these
spots for their camping.

When once the place was chosen, my drivers were
soon at work. Each man armed himself with his
huge snow knife, and between them they marked a
tircle on the snow. Then Johannes retired to the
middle and began to dig. He first made a wedge-
shaped hole to give himself a start; and then from
he sides of the hole he carved great slabs of the
frozen snow. I judged them to be about six or eight
aches thick, two or three feet long, and eighteen
mches high, and they were nearly as heavy as stone.
Johannes just tumbled them out of his hole as fast as
e could cut them, and as the hole grew I saw that
the slabs were all slightly curved. Julius seized each
slab as it toppled out, and carried it gingerly to the
edge of the circle. He set the slabs on edge, side by
side, and chipped them a little from the top so that
they leaned inwards. He pared away the first few
vith his knife so that the lowest ring, when finished,
ormed the beginning of a spiral. He followed the
spiral up, propping each slab against its neighbour,
und chipping its edge so that it leaned well inward.
Meanwhile Johannes got nearer and nearer the wall
with his digging, and his work got harder and harder,
or instead of tumbling the slabs out he had to pick
nem up and hand them to Julius over the leaning
wall. I thought the wall looked frail and unsafe, but
Julius seemed to think otherwise, for I have often
seen him crawl upon it and lean over to see how
Johannes was getting on inside. As a matter of fact,
is weight only pressed the slabs together a bit more
mily ; and I got so used to it that I have sat placidly

n a snow house while he crawled over the top.
163

-—

A SNOW HOUSE

At last the spiral was finished, all but the —
“keystone.” Julius sprawled on the side of the ©
house, while Johannes’s hands shoved a big slab ©
through the opening that still remained at the top. —
Julius laid it over the hole, and chipped the edges
away with his knife until it gently dropped into —
place, and the building was ready. A scraping and
trampling noise inside was the next thing; that was —
Johannes smoothing the floor. Meanwhile Julius
was filling all the crevices with handfuls of snow.
“Keep the wind out,” he said, “ boy’s work, this”;
from which I gathered that the Eskimo boy learns —
to build by fillmg the crevices with snow as his
father fits the slabs together. ‘ Yes,” said Julius,
‘“‘and boy has to follow quick, too; if he gets behind,
he’s no good. Soon learn quick. Now my boy—”
and Julius was off into an anecdote of /is boy’s
quickness.

Soon Johannes was ready to come out. I always ©
knew when, because he used to light his pipe; and a ~
weird and rather pretty sight it was, to see the glow} i
through the snow walls, with all the joints and —
crevices marked out because the snow was soften a
there and let the light through. It was generally ©
dark by the time the house was ready. J ohannes's _
sword poked out suddenly, and slashed a doorway in —
the wall, and the man himself crawled out and made —
straight for the sledge. a

Then the dogs began to sit up. They knew that
feeding-time was near. They were usually quiet
while the building was in progress, but the finish a
the work seemed to wake them up. They began
whine and prowl about, and Julius often had to show

them the whip to keep them in order. They a
164

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A SNOW HOUSE

collect into a bunch and sit on their haunches,
wistfully eyeing the preparations for their supper,
and uttering a queer whistling sound. Julius needed
only to trail the whip lash behind him as he walked,
and the dogs nearest to it would slink off to the
other side of the group. Meanwhile Johannes was
chopping a frozen seal into fragments. He spread
the pieces on the snow, and called “ 'Taimak ” (ready).

There was a pricking of ears and a lolling of
tongues: Julius quietly moved to one side, and with
a mighty pounce the dogs were on top of their food.
Yelping, snapping, snarling, gulping, the wise ones
bolted the frozen meat, bones and all, as fast as they
could pick it up. Some showed a little more
refinement, but the dog that picked up a chunk and
wandered aside to eat it at leisure got only a poor
share. It was evident that the only way to get
enough was to be quick; and it was marvellous how
soon that frozen seal was demolished. It was the
work of a few seconds. One of the drivers always
stood by to see fair play, while the other carried the
load off the sledge and piled it inside the snow
house.

I was generally cook on these occasions, and by
the time the dogs were fed my kettle was boiling
over a fire made in a hole in the snow, and I was
trying to thaw some bread.

The men did not mind their bread and meat
frozen: ‘“ko-ak,” they called it, and said it was
-“ananak” (splendid); but my teeth would not tackle
it. I used to make blocks of toast, and stuff them
in my pockets, and even then they were usually
frozen in the middle. However, though it was

rather different from dining at a high-class hotel, we
165

A WOLF

got our evening meal, with hunger as sauce; and we ©
were glad to lie down and rest.

The drivers used to “make the beds” by
spreading all the harness on the floor, and covering it —
with a bearskin. ‘Then across the middle of the ©
house they laid my sleeping-bag, and I crawled in. —
Last of all they made a little hole at the top of the —
house for ventilation, and blocked up the door, and —
we were ready for sleep. I was never cold in a
snow house, for a threefold bag like mine, sealskin, ©
reindeer skin, and blanket, was as snug as the
warmest of beds: but, oh, the floor! Dogs’
harness may be all very well as a bed; the Eskimos ©
used to lie on it without any extra covering, and
snore the snores of the just; but I rolled from side —
to side, vainly trying to find a soft spot, and feeling,
I suppose, very much as the poor princess did in the
fairy story, when she had to sleep with a pea under
the mattress. dl

On one of these wakeful nights I heard a terrible 7
scuffing among the dogs outside. There were con-—
stant snarlings and howls, mixed with a most weird |
trampling noise. |

At last the turmoil came too near for my peace
of mind: scraping, shuffling feet padded over the
snow house, bringing down showers of snow on to:
my face. I got rather alarmed.

I woke Johannes—and he took some waking, too. |

He rubbed his eyes, and then as the noise dawned!
on his ears, “ Kingmidrluit” (those awful dogs), he:
said, and shoved his way through the door. ‘There
was a sharp yelp and a brisk scuttering, and then
silence again. Johannes crawled back, and plastered)

up the doorway with handfuls of snow.
166

A NINETY-MILE TROT

«A wolf among the dogs,” he laconically told
me; “too much fight, all the time. Fine night:
start soon,” and he tumbled into his slumbers again.

It was well that those two men could sleep, for
the work they could cram into a day’s travelling
astonished me.

I once travelled from Nain to Okak, a distance
of ninety miles, with Julius alone. The snow was
hard, and the dogs in good trim, but the sky looked
threatening. ‘No stop,” said Julius, and he drove
through the ninety miles without a rest. We stopped
four or five times to disentangle the dogs’ traces, but
never for more than ten or fifteen minutes at a time;
and we ate our bread and meat as we ran. I took
my turn with the driving, but Julius bore the brunt
of the work. He chirruped and whistled and cooed
to the dogs as night began to come on, and they
began to whine for a rest; he ran in front of them
when they began to flag, and landed me in Okak
inside of twenty-two hours. He was as fresh as
paint the next day, and went off on a hunting ex-
pedition of his own.

My drivers did not seem to think it hard work ;
it was all part of their life; it came naturally to
them.

They used to enjoy the little incidents that came
to vary the wearisome plodding through the snow.
One day we were crossing the Kiglapeits, labouring
through a ravine where the snow lay deep and soft,
when Julius suddenly said “ A-ah.”

The dogs lay down very willingly, and I wondered
why the stoppage. Julius held up his hand. for
silence, and I saw that Johannes was loading a

gun. I could see no cause for this mysterious
167

A PARTRIDGE ON THE ROAD
business, but I did not want to spoil sport by —

speaking: so I contented myself by wishing that |

I had Eskimo eyes for the time being. Johannes
handed the gun to Julius. He raised it to his shoulder
and fired.

Then I saw a fluttering in the snow, not five
yards away: a little red stain broke out, and some-
thing red and white rolled down the bank towards

us. Julius’s hand was up for silence again, and ©

the gun went to his shoulder.
Another bang, another stain, another something
rolling.

Then I saw two partridges, white as the snow
on which they were walking. They looked from |
side to side in a dazed manner; walked a few steps, —

and then took wing and flew leisurely over the

bank out of sight. Perhaps they had never seen

a man before, or a dog, for that matter; and pro-

bably our dogs were too hard at work to notice :
them; and so the sledge was close beside them |

before we knew it.

Julius picked up the two he had shot, and tucked :

them under the bearskin at the front of the sledge.
‘We shall have a fine supper to-night,” he said;

and then, with a great roar of “ Hu-it” to the dogs, |

he drove on.

Once it was the tracks of reindeer that crossed
our path. We stopped, and the drivers had a
consultation.

“ Hu-it,” they said, and on went the dogs.
Johannes looked wistfully at the reindeer tracks
as we left them. ‘’I'welve hours old,” he said,
“gone a long way now. No good,” and he filled

his stumpy pipe to solace him.
168

|
:
i

i
1!
¥!

MY FROZEN NOSE

Johannes was a man of resource. I used to enjoy
_ watching him find water. He seemed to know
exactly where every stream ought to be, for he never
hesitated. He took a snow knife, and plunged it
into the snow up to the hilt. Then he drew it out
swiftly, and looked at the blade. It was wet! He
had found water, and soon had dug a hole and was
ladling out mugfuls for everybody’s benefit. He
did not always strike water at the first plunge, but
never seemed to need more than two or three.

I had an example of his resourcefulness when my
nose froze. It was a cold, dull day, and we were
running against the wind. Suddenly Johannes
stooped and gathered a handful of snow. He plumped
down beside me on the sledge, seized me round the
neck, and rubbed my nose vigorously with his snow-
ball. I remember that I spluttered considerably, and
Julius looked round with a grin. Johannes’s face
was all solicitude. ‘“ Your nose is frozen,” he said,
“your nose is frozen;” and he rubbed and rubbed
until he was satisfied that the life had come back into
it—and so Johannes saved my nose.

169

CHAPTER XIII

A Run to Narrw—A Campine Accipent—A Summons Home— ~
Sincina us Orr—Into THE Storm—Lost on THE MounTaIn— _
On tHe Epcge or a Precipice—Juiius To THE Rescur—AN ~
UncomrorTaBLe Nieut.

SUPPOSE that all Eskimo drivers are much —
| of a muchness, and the reason why I found my —
two men such excellent fellows was that we got so —
used to one another. But I have never seen so good —
a path- -finder as little Johannes, and I could not help |

few journeys I made without him. Johannes could 1
not come; his wife was ill, and it seemed unreason- ~
able to ask him to leaveher. I think that big Julius —
was as much concerned as I, for when I told him to 4

make a choice. Finally he came along leading his :
cousin Kristian, a big, burly young man, and told me
that this was “aipara” (my other one). This was —
Kristian’s first trip as driver to a European, and he :
evidently felt flattered ; at any rate, he worked like a
Trojan in spite of his reputation for laziness, and his
gift for managing dogs was truly marvellous. In
our snow house on the mountain pass Kristian
became reminiscent. That is one of the strangest
of tacks for an Eskimo to take, but I suppose the
unaccustomed luxury of half frozen tinned mutton —

and three parts frozen bread, washed down with tea
170

A CAMPING ACCIDENT

which was boiling at the beginning of the meal and
scummed with ice before the end, was sufficient
to jog Kristian’s memory of the last long sledge
trip that he had made. He was a boy at the time,
and was doing the boy’s work of filling the crevices
in the snow house wall after the builder, while his
father, old Abia of Okak, kept the dogs in order by
flicking the whip to and fro. Kristian struck his
knife in the snow house wall, and just at that
moment Abia lashed out at a quarrelsome dog. ‘The
lash, as it came twirling back for the stroke, wrapped
itself round the knife and hurled it straight at Abia.
He thought that the whip had struck him, and took
no more notice until a queer faintness and the sight
of blood trickling over his boot made him put
his hand to his back—and find the knife. ‘The man
in the snow house heard his cries, and came running
to see what was wrong. Kristian had forgotten the
name of that man, but he must have been a cool
customer, for he set about a piece of marvellous
emergency surgery. He cut a thread of hide from
the harness of one of the dogs, and, using a spike of
bone for a needle, he sewed up the wound and
‘stopped the bleeding. Abia got over both the
injury and the rough surgery, for I knew him as
an old man of seventy-seven, a great age for an
Kskimo.
I had only been a few days in Nain when a
solitary Eskimo arrived from Okak with a note from
my wife, whom I had left in charge of the hospital.
“A boy has been brought in with a compound
fracture. If you can come at once you may save
his leg.” The messenger was almost worn out:

he had hurried on night and day, as Eskimos do
171 /

“A SUMMONS HOME

when a life is at stake, and his poor little team of —
seven dogs sprawled upon the snow, as weary as
he. I called Julius. “We must start home at
once,” I told him. “No good,” said he, “we have ©
just fed the dogs.” I knew what that meant: —
sledge dogs get a meal every two days, and gorge
themselves so that they can hardly move. “ But
we must go: borrow dogs, leave the sleepiest behind :
we must go.” Julius went off without a word.
Presently Kristian came. ‘ Are we going to start ?
Look, bad storm coming,” and he pointed towards
the north. ‘“ Never mind, Kristian, we must go.”
“ Ahaila,” said Kristian, and went to help Julius
harness the dogs.

News soon spreads, and the whole village turned
out to see the start. As I walked down to take
my place on the sledge the old Eskimo schoolmaster
laid his hand on my sleeve. ‘Don’t go,” he said,
‘you will all be lost. Don’t go.”

His concern was real, so I called my drivers.
“What do you say?” I asked them. “Are you
willing to go?” —

“[llale” (of course), they said. ‘ Ready,” said
I, “go ahead.” The dogs slowly raised themselves
on their legs, and whined as they trotted along the
bumpy path towards the sea-ice; and the heavy
wrack of the northern storm came bowling along
to meet us. ‘“ Aksuse,” shouted the people, “be
strong,” and we waved our hands and shouted back.
Then they began to sing. |

There is a lump in my throat and a mist in my
eyes even now, when I think of that scene: just
a crowd of rough Eskimos, people whose grand-

fathers had been heathen and wild, singing a hymn ~
172

SINGING US OFF

of God-speed as we set out on our dangerous
errand.

“ Takkotigélarminiptingnut
Gide illagilisetok ”

they sang, and the charmingly balanced harmony
came fainter and ever fainter as the wind began
to sigh about us and the snow to beat on our
faces. ‘‘God be with you till we meet again ”—and
we settled confidently to our task.

That was the quietest day I have ever spent
on a dog-sledge. ‘There was none of the chatter
and banter to which we were used; there was work
for us all to do, and we did it seriously, and all
the time the drivers chewed pensively at their
battered tobacco pipes and said nothing.

It was slow going until the dogs had got over
their feed, but towards evening the pace improved
and we made our usual six or seven miles an hour
in spite of the storm. As often as the dogs got
tangled up Julius straightened their traces without
stopping the sledge. I had heard tell of this feat,
and so was very much interested when he set
about it; but I thought it a very risky piece of
acrobatic work. He pulled the team back close
to the sledge, so as to get the frozen knot in the
hauling line within reach of his teeth. The dogs,
of course, thought they were going to be thrashed,
and tugged and galloped most frantically, so that
the man had hard work to hold them.

We should have been in a pretty plight if they
had got away, for they would have turned in their
tracks and gone back to Nain, and we should have

been left to walk. However, Julius tied the line
173

INTO THE STORM

to one leg, and chewed the knot loose; then he
slipped the traces off one by one and looped them
over his other leg, so that all through the per-
formance it was a case of seventeen dogs harnessed
to Julius’s legs, while he sat tight and made the
sledge come along with him. My heart was in
my mouth until the risky business was over. All
day long I sat on the sledge with my back to the
wind, and wondered how the drivers were finding —
the way. It was evening before I got any inkling ©
of our whereabouts, and then the way led us
uphill, and I knew that we had left the sea-ice ©
and were on the land. There followed a cold and |
dreary hour of bumping and jolting over rocks
and up sudden little cliffs, while the men were
constantly out of sight in the storm: then Kristian’s —
voice said “A-ah, ah,” and the dogs) stopped. —
“Stopped” is hardly expressive enough: at the ©
word their legs seemed to collapse under them,
and they curled themselves up where they dropped.
I confess to a feeling of loneliness as I stood —
beside the sledge, with the snow driving silently past —
and nothing to see at all but the dim outlines of the
dogs as they curled round and went to sleep. The —
occasional moan of the wind made things worse: the —
drivers had vanished into the gloom, and I seemed ©
to be alone on the mountain. But a ghostly form
loomed up, and big Julius, like the thoughtful —
fellow he is, had a word of encouragement to say.
“ We shall build a snow house here.” |
“Do you know where we are?” I asked him.
“On the proper sledge-track over Kiglapeit, of —
course,” he said; and his tone sounded rather

surprised, as if it were a preposterous idea that we
174

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13 105 pue ysolj 931 q) Sut G3 utp { q qa 43 ut GL Pinoys s9q3 F

24} SSvip JaAlIp ey} UayM Suryem A[prey

‘aie Avy} areyM doajs pue uMmop ary Ajduns fay} 3ey1 poesia os o1e sSop ay} uns sAvp B jo pus 241 1V

so0q daull, AH,

Bei Paretl,.
err ae
ea

INTO THE STORM

could possibly be off the track. The snow swallowed
him up again, but somehow I felt less chilly for his
words.

Happily we had stopped close to a straggling bush,
so I was able to cut some twigs for a fire without
any risk of losing myself. I lit my fire in a niche of
the rock, and put on a kettleful of snow, and then
stamped up and down to get a little warmth into me.
On my way to the snow house I trod on what looked
like a mound of snow in the river bed. The mound
got up and yelped, and I saw that I was among the
dogs. ‘They were peacefully blanketed by the snow,
content to remain buried until the drivers woke them
up in the morning. Of supper they had no thought,
for they had not got over their breakfast by any
means. ‘The one I had trodden on settled down
again as soon as he found that the disturbance was
neither the signal for work nor the beginning of a
fight, and ina few moments he was, to all intents
and purposes, a snow-covered stone as before. I
picked my way carefully among the others, mindful
of my precious kettle, and struggled through the low
doorway into the snow house. That particular snow
house was the smallest I have ever had, for the men
had no time to waste over comfort; shelter was all
we wanted. T’hey gave me the longest diameter,
but I had to draw my knees up to lie down at all, and
the uncomfortable cramped attitude would have
been enough to drive sleep away even if I had not
suffered the added annoyance of a sleeping-bag
partly filled with snow. Imagine taking off your
sodden boots, and poking your stockinged feet into
what ought to be the snug warmth of a thick,

blanket-lined sealskin bag, only to meet an icy mass
175

INTO THE STORM

of snow! Ugh! I crawled down head first and —
scraped the most of it out; but the bag was damp ©
and clammy, and it took me half the night to thaw
it to a comfortable warmth. A pint mug of hot tea —
is a wonderful help at a time like that, even if the —
water is smoky and clouded with grits; and we used
to fold our hands and “say grace” for those rough —
meals with real thankfulness. But oh! for an
Eskimo constitution for sledge travelling. After this —
tea-supper of ours Julius and Kristian lay down to —
rest. They had no sleeping-bags; they spread the ~
dogs’ harness under them so as not to be actually on —
the snow, and pillowed their heads on their arms. —
They had to bend their bodies to fit the curve of the —
wall, but before many minutes had passed I heard ©
great snores from each side of me. I must have —
dozed towards morning, for I suddenly felt some- ©
body shaking me and poking a mug of tea into my —
hand. The men had left me to sleep while they —
harnessed the dogs and made the breakfast, and I
blessed the kindness that spared me the usual long
shivery time of waiting. {

The weather was worse than ever, but the men —
were quite cheerful about it, although they must
have known that we had a thoroughly dangerous —
task in front of us. To-day we must cross the
summit of the Kiglapeit mountains, with a blinding —
snowstorm beating in our faces. But the Eskimos
were in their element, and at times like these they
seem unable to be faint-hearted. )

Off we went into the storm, and the sledge-runners —
groaned as they ploughed heavily through the soft
snow. For ten or twelve miles the going was plain;

our track followed the course of a frozen torrent,
176 3

LOST ON THE MOUNTAIN

between high banks, and the dogs had no difficulty
in picking their way ; but when we got on to the lake
at the top of the pass the trouble began. ‘The wind
was blowing in a circle, and gave us no guidance at
all; and to me it seemed that we were on an open
plain of snow, enclosed by whirling walls of white.
I could see nothing but the snow slipping past
us as the sledge drove steadily on. Julius sat with
set face, continually crying “Hu-it, hu-it” (go
straight on, go straight on) to the dogs, hoping by
this means to hit the track again on the other side of
the lake. An hour slipped by and still there was
no land, so we stopped the sledge for a confer-
ence. ‘‘ Ajornarmat” (it cannot be helped), said the
drivers; ‘‘it is useless to look for landmarks, for we

are still on the lake. We must just drive on and
- hope.” We seemed to be travelling fast, for the

dogs had got over their food of yesterday and were
frisky and full of energy ; but it was a very blindfold
sort of work, and I think it was a relief to us all to
feel the grind of rock under the runners, and to have
the sensation of going uphill again. We were across

the lake, though where, and how far from our

course, we could not tell. The nose of the sledge
pointed up and up, and then suddenly dipped: we
were over the ridge on the summit of the Kiglapeit
mountains, and the men were slipping the heavy
walrus-hide drags over the nose of each runner in

‘readiness for the slide downhill. The sledge began
__ to gather way, and I took a good grip of the lashings

and braced myself to withstand the jolts, for to fall
off meant certain disaster. Suddenly a cloud of
powdery snow hissed up as the drags bit the road

under the runners, and I was flung violently back-
| 177 M

ON THE EDGE OF A PRECIPICE

wards against my travelling box. As I fell I hada
glimpse of the drivers leaning heavily back, with ©
heels dug into the snow, straining their utmost to ©
stop the sledge. ‘The whining, frightened dogs were ~
all about us. Julius turned the sledge bodily upside —
down, to prevent the dogs from running away with —
it, and then, as I came forward to speak to him, he ©
held up a warning hand. His laconic “ Ajorkok” —
(it cannot be done) was enough; I knew that we —
had missed the channel that runs between the —
shoulders of the summit, and were on the very brink ©
of a slope that runs steeper and ever steeper to end —
in a sheer precipice, down which we might have ©
fallen headlong. There was a tight feeling in my —
throat as I drew back from the giddy depth of |
whirling snowflakes and joined the drivers where
they stood by the sledge. It had been a narrow
escape. “We must go back,” said Julius. “No,”
said Kristian, “a little further to the left we can get —
safely down: it is too slow to go back.” “Oukagle”
(but no), said Julius. ‘ Ahailale” (but yes), said
Kristian; and it looked like the beginning of a
quarrel. They appealed tome. ‘Go back,” I said.

Kristian heaved the sledge round, and Julius
trotted over the sledge crest again, calling ‘‘ Ha, ha,
ha” to the dogs. For a long time I saw no more of
him, and more than once Kristian said, “ We ought |
to have gone to the left ; too slow, this.” Even the
dogs were out of sight; I could see the long trace
slipping over the snow, with now and again a glimpse
of the tangled, knotted mass of lines that led away to
the dogs. The lines were always tight, and I knew |
by that that Julius was somewhere ahead, and the

dogs were following him. Suddenly he appeared
178

JULIUS TO THE RESCUE

looking a real snow man. “ Here is the track,” he
announced, and flung himself heavily on to the sledge
and began to charge his pipe. Now the dogs ran
yelping on, and the sledge raced after them down the
slope. ‘The drags were on, but the way was safe, for
we had recognised the passage between two rocks
which marked the beginning of the descent to the sea-
_ice, and we drove on with perfect confidence. We
reached the ice late in the afternoon, and found the
wind blowing straight from the north. This was a
help, for it gave us our course across the bay; but
the dogs refused to face it, and kept edging away to
one side or the other, so that once more we had to
rely on the willing Julius. On he trotted, right in
the teeth of the wind, with the dogs scampering
close on his heels. When for a while we skirted the
land he came back to the: sledge for a rest and a
smoke, but in the open he dived into the storm
again, and led the dogs on with tales of seals and

| foxes and a house to rest in. At last his words came

true. “Iglo, iglo” (a house, a house), he yelled, and
stood to let the dogs race by. As he jumped on to
the sledge he said “ A house; sleep here,” and the
sledge drew up with a bump and a rattle at the door
of one of the craziest shacks that it has been my lot to
see. ‘The door was off its hinges, if it ever had any,
and the doorway was choked with snow; but we
dug our way in with hands and snow knives. There
‘was a rusty iron stove without a pipe, but we filled

it with damp twigs and lit it with a stump of candle,
| and sat in the horrible reek. We were warm, and we
could dry our clothes, even if we were choked. At first
it was too awful for me, and even the Eskimos grinned

at it; but when we got the fire nice and hot, and
179

AN UNCOMFORTABLE NIGHT

turned the back of the stove to the doorway, we got
something better, and we hung our boots from the
rafters and sat down to our toasted but rather frost- —
bitten bread and mutton with quite a feeling of —
luxury. |

But oh, that night! The Eskimos thought we ©
were in for a real treat; there was actually a platform
bed of moss, as dry as we could wish; and we lay ©
down upon it side by side. Soon I heard the usual —
snores, but I[—well, I was in the hands or claws or ©
jaws of creatures left by previous occupants of that —
bed. There are no fleas in Labrador, but there are —
things that bite as hard, I-will not try to give their ©
scientific name, for I never saw them: they just bit —
and fled. I will not prolong the memory of that |
night: suffice it to say that I was glad to see the ©
morning. The storm had gone: we could see our —
landmarks, and the only disadvantage was soft snow —
knee deep, through which the dogs slowly wallowed.
I was worn out. The end of our journey is prosaic —
enough, after the excitement of yesterday, but, be the —
fact prosaic or not, I knew that there was work wait- f
ing for me; so I got into my sleeping-bag, and the }
drivers laid me on the sledge and tucked me snugly i
in, and there I slept. I woke late in the afternoon —
to the shout of “ Kemmutsit ” (the sledge), and as I
raised my head I saw the Okak people nn |
out to welcome us home.

180

CHAPTER XIV

A Drownine Accipent—A BrEAKDOWN ON THE MounTAIN—
JOHANNES IN A StormM—Crossine Aa CREVICE

DDLY enough, a drowning accident was the
| cause of my next sledge journey. The message
- eame, as Labrador messages do, sudden and terse,
| carried by two stolid men post haste over the hills
as soon as the ice was firm enough for them to travel.
There had been a drowning accident in November,
wrote the superintendent ; would I go and teach the
people life-saving drill? The messengers were be-
sieged with anxious questions, and from their laconic
answers I pieced together the story of the mishap.
It appears that a strong storm was blowing, and
some of the men home from the seal-hunt saw their
big boat beginning to drag its anchor. Absorbed by
the idea of saving their boat, four of them put off
from the beach in a little flat-bottomed punt; and
after a short battle with the waves over they went.
Kskimos are no swimmers; they are more used to
ice than water; and it is no wonder that the poor
fellows made but a feeble fight against the stormy
sea. One of them was floundering face downwards
when a big wave caught him and cast him on a
boulder, where he sprawled, gasping and half choked :
the other three had never a chance, and their bodies
were washed up on the beach half-an-hour later.

A plucky little Eskimo put out in a punt and

managed to save the man on the boulder at the risk
181

A DROWNING ACCIDENT

of his life, managing somehow to keep the punt
afloat and tow the drowning man into safety, and
that is the end of the story. My drivers entered
very heartily into the idea of another journey to
Nain, and started my sledge on a raw February
morning with characteristic determination and energy.
But they were beaten for once: the snow fell thicker
and thicker as we went along, and after doing ten
miles they stopped and offered me my choice be-
tween camping and turning back. As for them-
selves, I know that they would certainly have
camped; but, as usual, they left the decision to me,
and I argued the question out for myself while they
waited. They would have felt just as much at home
in a snow hut as anywhere else, and frozen food
would have suited them perfectly ; but the European .
constitution finds it a terrible trial to live in a freez- —
ing atmosphere without warmth of any sort, and I ~
knew very well that my teeth and digestion would ~
both fail if I gave them nothing but blocks of frozen |
meat and slabs of stone-hard bread to work upon, so —
I chose to go back. So it comes about that I cannot —
give a vivid description of weary days and nights ©
spent shivering in a little snow bee-hive with the —
storm whirling noisily outside, but instead I can ~
look back with thankfulness, and record how I was —
spared that most awful of Labrador experiences. —
Others that I know have had it to endure—quiet, ©
lion-hearted missionaries, or brave, hardy settler —
men—and they point to a limp, or a frosted hand ©
or foot, as a memento of the time. .

“ Go back,” I said. ‘i

Julius swung the sledge round with never a

word, and Johannes straightened the harness and
182

A BREAKDOWN ON THE MOUNTAIN

shouted the bedraggled dogs into movement again.
He sat by me on the sledge, and thumped my
shoulders to shake off the snow, and shouted in my

_ear “Going back is best for you: you would only

freeze out here.”

After that the two drivers sat like solid men of
snow, and only came to life when their pipes wanted
filling or when the dogs threatened to stop. The
sledge toiled slowly on, creaking and groaning
through the soft new snow, and the dogs seemed to

_ be finding the way for themselves. I was mystified

until Johannes told me that we were on the wood
track. ‘Dogs come this far every day,” he shouted ;
“they know the road.” It was a wearisome kind
of travelling, with nothing to be seen but a whirl of
snowflakes, and nothing to vary the monotony: the
drivers sat still and puffed, and I sat still and
shivered.

_ After we had crossed the last neck of land before
Okak Bay, we ran into fine weather, and no doubt

_ the village was rather surprised to see us back so
soon. The people came running over the ice to

meet us, fearing that something had gone wrong,
and shouting in alarm; but the first sight of the
three of us all heaped with snow must have been
enough to tell them what things were like behind

_ the hill, and no doubt the drivers had plenty to say

over the pipes during the evening.
Three days later we made another start, when

the storm had blown itself out, and found very little

of the snowfall of the previous days: the wind had
swept it away and banked it into huge drifts among
the trees, so that our road upon the frozen sea was

none the worse. But though our first day’s run was a
183

A BREAKDOWN ON THE MOUNTAIN

good one, and we were able to build our snow house
on the summit of the Kiglapeit Pass, half way to
Nain, there was sufficient excitement in the second
day to make the trip a memorable one.

The Eskimos say that there is always wind in
the mountains, but on that second morning the
wind was much too strong for comfort, though the
men assured me that it was quite safe to travel.
But the mountain stream, which is the winter road,
was clear of snow, and the dogs could not keep their
feet upon it. Each puff of wind sent them skidding
about, howling with terror, and the sure-footed little
Johannes was kept hard at work lifting the traces
over rocks and points of ice while the heavy sledge
came bowling after him.

Things were even worse with the sledge. Julius
and I were clinging to it, trying to keep its nose
to the front, but the gusts swirled it hither and
thither and flung us from side to side like corks.
At last we came to a frozen waterfall, and the dogs

took to the bank. Julius tugged and strained and :

put forth all his strength and cunning, but the ice

was like glass and the sledge would not turn; the '

runners could get no grip upon the slippery surface,
and we were helpless in front of the wind.

After a short few moments of anxious clinging ;

we came up against a boulder, and over we went

with a crash. I remember quite well that as I was
flung from my hold on the sledge and went sliding ©

down the frozen river I heard Johannes’s voice from
the bank shouting “ Ah—ah—ah” to make the dogs
lie down.

I picked myself up and made my precarious way

to the sledge by clinging to the boulders—it was
184

A BREAKDOWN ON THE MOUNTAIN

impossible to walk in the ordinary way because of
the wind whistling down stream—and found the
drivers holding a palaver over a smashed runner.
They displayed no consternation at our plight, and
had very little to say; at times like that the Eskimo
is a man of action, and it seemed quite natural that

with a short grunt of explanation little Johannes
pulled an axe from among the load firmly lashed to
the upturned sledge and trotted off on an errand

of his own.

Meanwhile, Julius was looking for his gun, which
he had tucked along the floor of my travelling box,
and I was amazed to see him load it and start firing
at the broken runner. He was using great bullets
that he had most likely intended for reindeer, and
the effect of each shot was to bore a good-sized hole

“in the wood. He placed eight of them at intervals
| along the runner, ‘some near the top and some near

the bottom, and then coolly polished out his gun
with a wad of tow and made it fast on the sledge
again.

By this time Johannes was in sight on the river

| bank, carrying a long, thin tree over his shoulder ;

and Julius set to work to find a spare length of
seal-hide trace somewhere among his_ travelling
equipment. If only the crash had not jarred my
camera open, and fogged every one of the plates, I

should have had a series of unique pictures of the

sledge-mending ; as it was, I was sufficiently fasci-

| nated to forget the February cold while I stood and
| watched those two Eskimos at work. They chopped
| the tree to the proper length, and flattened it a little

on one side; then they threaded the line through

the shot holes and bound the tree to the broken
185

JOHANNES IN A STORM

runner. “’'Taimak” (that will do), they said, and —
moved away to get the dogs ready. In a few
minutes they were lighting their pipes for another —
start, and we bumped and slid and twisted down
the river as if nothing had happened. I noticed
that Julius kept the sound runner towards the
boulders, as if he hardly cared to put the patched ©
one to any strain, but we jolted over the ridges and
raced down the slopes in quite an ordinary way, and —
made the descent of the pass to the sea-ice in average —
time.

For an hour or two after leaving the mountains
we enjoyed fine weather, but as the afternoon wore
on jand the sun sank the wind began to follow us
again. The air had a queer threatening chill in it;
little eddies of snow came whirling along the floor,
whisking round us and poking up our sleeves and
down our necks, and the dogs dropped their tails_
and huddled together and whined as they ran.
Within half-an-hour we were in the thick of the;
drift, and I found that running before a storm is”
no more pleasant than facing it. Johannes, who’
was sitting by me, pulled his sealskin dicky over:
him, and shouted “ Ananaulungitok-ai” (this is not
nice), and I shouted my “ Ahaila” back at him with)
some little apprehension; I knew that it is some-
thing out of the ordinary that makes an Eskimo!
driver put on sealskins over his blanket and calico,
but the men always had a word of explanation for
me. “ Allright,” shouted Johannes, “ very cold now:
get to Nain soon,” and then he turned his back toy
the wind, and sat drumming on the runners with
his feet to let the dogs think that the driver had

his eye on them, As a matter of fact the dog:
186

JOHANNES IN A STORM

were out of sight; I could hear no’ sound of them

above the roaring of the wind, and there was
nothing to be seen but the main hauling trace
quivering away into the drift and the white floor
slipping past.

_ As long as daylight lasted I sould understand
how the drivers found the way, because all the flying
snow seemed to be whipped up from the floor, and

in the occasional lulls of the wind we caught sight of

the cliffs and mountains alongside of us. In fact,
when the sledge rose up to cross a neck of land we

gradually drew above the drift, and could look back

and see the sea-ice covered with a rushing cloud of
powdery snow that seemed like driven smoke. But

when night fell, and the storm roared louder, I began

to wonder how we should fare. The dogs were tiring,
and would not turn; they wanted the storm behind
them; and when all landmarks were swallowed up in

ee drift and the darkness, and there was nothing for

me to see but an occasional glimpse of the stars or
the dull glow of the drivers’ pipes as they stuffed the

‘tobacco down with their thumbs, little Johannes
pulled off his sealskin dicky—and I knew that he

‘was going to run ahead. “Sit on the sledge, or you
will get lost,” he yelled, and trotted into the dark.

It seemed hours before I saw him again, and then I
suddenly found him beside me. “ Are you cold ?” he
shouted, and slipped off the sledge again to join Julius
where he was wrestling, with hands and teeth, with
the frozen and tangled traces. I hardly knew that
the sledge had stopped, but presently Johannes ran
off again, and there was a mighty jerk as the dogs

got up to follow him. The next stop was dramatic.

Miles and miles we seemed to have run, when sud-
187

JOHANNES IN A STORM

denly the sledge went grinding over pebbles, and I |
heard Julius’s big voice roaring “* Ah.” I ran forward, —
and found_that we had stopped close to a huge —
boulder, about the size of a cottage. Johannes ap-—
peared from the darkness ahead, and said, with a~
jerk of his thumb towards the boulder, “We ought
to be on the other side of that.” ‘“ Illale” (certainly),
answered Julius, and swung the nose of the sledge —
round. ‘“Ha-ha-ha” piped Johannes, and the dogs
went after him round the boulder. I could see very —
little from my seat at the back of the sledge; even
Julius, a few feet in front of me, was no more than a —
silent shape, a sort of petrified man; though I had
evidence that he was very wide awake by his sudden ©
lurches and heaves, and the kicks that he gave to the |
snow, when the sledge needed turning to one side or ©
the other; and that his keen eyes were wide open in
the dark I knew by the alacrity with which he sud- ~
denly jumped off and hauled the sledge to one side
to keep the runner from slipping into a crack. Apart
from these little outbursts of energy he seemed well
content to sit still and chew his pipe, with his back
to the wind and his feet dangling close to the floor.
He certainly did not seem to be suffering from cold ~
toes, and if I had remarked upon the fact he would ©
probably have said “ Ahaila, I am an Eskimo.” :
As for myself, I could find no pleasure in sitting —
stock still; I wanted to run for warmth, but running |
was an impossibility because of the unevenness of the —
snow. The Eskimo has a high-stepping gait that |
serves him very well over rough snow in the dark ie
but it is not an easy gait to learn, and only those |
bred on the Labrador manage it. For me it was a

case of “sit still,” as Johannes had said; so the nex :
188 |

THE UNWILLING PUPPY

The puppies receive their training at the hands of the Eskimo boys, who harness them and
compel them to drag small sledges or blocks of ice. The puppies resent this treatment with
piteous howls and a most aggravating stubbornness, but after a few days they fall into
proper habits.

cae atale

A SLEDGE PARTY

This shows the Eskimo method of harnessing the dogs, each on a separate trace. The dogs cross
and recross incessantly as they run, until the traces are bunched into a great frozen mass; ther the
driver stops them and undoes the knot with his teeth.

rr.
on .
i Me

.
ae
-~ y “ - f<a3 = 19 >
- > 0 —- * “ads (8-2 *
: ; a pt
* 4 =
aim x °
= Sag pe Cem _ mt Z aoe
F met rs 4
ar | a tey i
eae AS So
p ; An ~~ -
w=) a

JOHANNES IN A STORM

; time: the sledge stopped I got the polar bear's skin

that was lashed over the load, and wrapped myself in
that for warmth. The little man from ahead had his
usual word of encouragement for me: ‘Nain in one
hour,” he said; “‘no more stops.” “ However will
you find Nain?” I asked him. He waited until the
next lull in the wind, and pointed upwards. ‘ Do
you see that bright star?” he said; “that star is right
over Nain: the people say that if it were to fall it

- would fall on the village: we go under that star ’”—
and away he went, and I felt the jerk as the sledge

started after him. Sure enough, in one hour we raced
up the slope to the village of Nain, and the dogs roused
the people out of their houses with their yelping.

No doubt Johannes gave me what seemed to
him the proper explanation of his method of finding

‘the way in the dark of the storm; he was steering by

the star; but I think that he hardly explained the
marvellous gift of finding the way that Eskimos have.
Tn blinding snowstorms, and in black darkness under
‘cloudy skies, they go from point to point, silent and
self-possessed, knowing places by the dimmest glimpse
of some headland or the merest outline of a rock
peering through the gloom. More than once I have
travelled with them when my eyes could see nothing
at all, nothing but driving snow, and they have trotted
on without the least hesitation or uneasiness, abso-
lutely certain that they would “get there.” It seems
to me like a sixth sense—the sense of direction—the
Same sense that animals display.

On our way home from Nain we passed the big
boulder. It lay on the frozen beach, at the foot of

_ @ jutting point: on each side there stretched a wide
bay. We had crossed the northern bay in the drift,

189

JOHANNES IN A STORM

and had found the boulder after the crossing, only
we had tried to pass on the landward side of it, where
the wind had swept a path clear of snow and strewn’
with the beach pebbles. i wondered how we had

morning in the clear winter sunshine Johannes gavel
a shrug, and said “I got on the wrong side of that!”

Partly, I suppose, his remark was an expression
of the scrupulous exactness of the Eskimo mind—
the same exactness that is seen in the little models o :

time: every bit of the innermost working, however! t
hidden it may be from sight, is an exact reproduction j
of the real thing; the natural tendency of the
Eskimo is to be thorough. :

Partly it showed Johannes’s simple faith in hid .
own gifts as a guide—no brag; utter simplicity. ‘

No one is more careful than an Eskimo sledge-

driver, and the quiet watchfulness to avoid eve

move. No chance droppings from the dogs must :
soil the bright runners, or the sledge will run heavily, -
so off the driver jumps and heaves the big sledge
around; every crevice must be crossed squarely, so.
that there is no risk of the runners slipping down;
there must be no needless bumping over hummocks_
or frozen waves of snow, and when there must needs_
be bumps the men use their strength to let the sledge ~
fall gently ; and so it comes about that sledge travel-
ling with Eskimo drivers is as safe as sledge travelling | |
can be. rs

On the way home from one of our journeys in

the springtime, we found that the tides had played”
190

ated eS aad =!

CROSSING A CREVICE

havoc with the ice; a crack four or five feet wide lay
across the track, and there seemed to be no way of
getting roundit. ‘“ We must go across,” said the men.
The first thing was to fling or shove the dogs into
the water one by one; they made a great to-do about
it, but the drivers pushed them all in, and the terrified
creatures were soon shaking themselves on the other
side. The next thing was to push the sledge along
until the front of it bridged the crack and the runners
were touching the other side ; then with a great howl
of “ Hu-it” big Julius started the dogs and we all
jumped on to the sledge as it careered safely over.
| Then the drivers turned and looked at one another,
|and laughed; it was, to them, a spice of excitement
in the monotony of sledge travel.

191

a - ak i ee oe a 4
N Akeieie ee fee oe lo eee

CHAPTER XV

Daniet—A Hunprep Mies In an Open Boatr—Danien
as Cook—Danie._’s Housre—Tue otp Wipow

FTER the bustle of winter sledge travel, the
early days of July seemed to me the dreariest

time of the whole year. The ice on the bay was.
broken, and the water was packed close with the
floating pieces. It seemed a dreary time, because we
were so shut in; no sledges, no boats, no exercise bu
walks on the sloppy beach or the softening snow or
the hills. Most of the people had gone to thei
sealing camps, and the few who were left in the’
village had turned their sledges upside down on the
roofs of their houses and were busy at the tarring of”
their wooden boats, waiting eagerly for the ice
float away and leave the water clear for them. And)
yet it was on a July day in 1905 that there came)
the excitement of a shout of “ Umiat, umiat” (a
boat). e
It had nearly reached the jetty before we saw it,
a big white boat with a crew of four sturdy Eskimos,
who poled their precarious way between the ice-
pans ; and when the Okak people saw the faces of the
men they gave a great shout of “ Nainemiut” (Nain
people). a
I met the four men as they trotted up the jetty, ‘h
and found, as I had expected, that it was an urgen 4
call that had brought them across a hundred miles of

ice-packed sea at a time of year when the Eskimos
192 i

THE AUTHOR IN TRAVELLING COSTUME

In sealskin from head to foot, with an under-suit of blanket. The hair of the Labrador seal is
coarse ; but the dappled black on silver, its natural colour, is exceedingly handsome. The sleeping
bag behind is also of sealskin, with a double lining of reindeer skin and blanket.

DANIEL

"are wont to say about travelling “ Ajorkok ” (it cannot

be done).

But the boatmen had very little to say about their
trip ; all they wanted was that I should find a fifth
man, so that they might rest by turns from the
rowing—“ Okumaidlarpok-illa” (very hard work).
So I surveyed the village in my mind’s eye, search-
ing for a likely boatman among the few who had not
gone to the seal-hunt. And I thought of Daniel.

I knew Daniel as a good and handy workman, so
I sent for him. Soon he came shyly in—a short,
square man with a broad back and muscular limbs,
and, above all, a willing, good-natured face. He
seemed to have discarded his characteristic “ dicky,”
and was in his summer costume of an ancient jersey,
left him, no doubt, by some fisherman from New-
foundland ; and he stood waiting, with the expectant
air that he always wore when there was work to be
done.

« Are you ready to start for Nain at six o'clock

| to-morrow morning ?”

“Yes,” said Daniel, without a moment’s hesita-
tion, and no more perturbed than if I had asked him
to do one of the everyday things at which he is so
handy. “ Ahaila,” he repeated, and turned and went
home.

When I walked down the jetty in the morning
the four Nain men were at their places: the tallest,

| chosen captain by his mates, was in the bows with

a pole, scrutinising the ice-field; the others were
leaning over their oars, smoking and chatting and
exchanging gossip with the people who had gathered

to see us off.

Stroke-oar was vacant; but even as I looked
193 N

IN AN OPEN BOAT ‘

about for Daniel, the man himself came hrchinggy
along hugging a big stone. 5

« Aksuse,” he said, and dropped the stone gently — B!
into the boat. The others took no notice, beyond —
the usual “ Ah,” and Daniel ambled off again. For
fully five minutes he went on with his task of
collecting stones, and at last I asked him, “ Are
these for ballast?” Daniel grinned and twinkled.
‘«¢ Me cook,” he said, and settled to his oar. ‘ Taimak,
hai?” said the captain. “'Taimak,” I answered from —
my place by the rudder, and we were off. |

I really think that the first few miles out of
Okak were the slowest that I have ever travelled
not even excepting mauja-travelling on a sledge |
trip. The pace was a trifle faster than standing still, ©
and that is about the best that I can say for it.

Happily the day was calm, or we could never
have moved at all. The method of getting along”
was simple enough in a way. ‘The oarsmen stood
facing the bows, so as to see what was ahead; some-_
times they dipped their oars in the water, but more
often there was not enough water within reach, and
they had to shove the boat along by pushing with
their oars on the ice. The captain stood up with his |
pole, carefully keeping the boat from bumping the
ice, and separating the pans to make a passage, anc
all the while he never ceased from muttering orders |
to the rowers. ‘The boat’s nose was never pointing |
in one direction for more than a minute or two;)
north, south, east, and west we steered, and once we
were in the ridiculous position of having to wriggle a
hundred yards back towards Okak in our search for
a way. Things went quietly enough as long as we

were in the shelter of the bay, but outside we met
194 F’

IN. AN OPEN BOAT

_ the tide, and found ourselves in a field of ice that

was constantly on the move. The captain leaned on
his pole, darting this way and that, and yelling his
orders at the top of his voice, and the willing
boatmen toiled and shoved. At one moment the boat
was leaping forward through a clear channel; at the
next, a big ice-pan would catch it and fling it round
with a shudder, while the men strove to hold it off
with their oars and perspired with the exertion. It
was an exciting time, but we got through without
damage; and I felt as much relieved as the Eskimos
when we came to a stretch of open water and left
the churning ice behind us. About midday a light
breeze sprang up, and the men heaved a great sigh of
relief as they drew in their oars. In a minute they
had got the sails up, and the captain came jumping
over the thwarts and took the tiller.

_ Two of the oarsmen made their way to the deep
bows, and sat there chatting and filling their pipes ;
another just fell asleep where he was, sprawling over
his oar; while Daniel looked up at me with a
twinkle, and said again, ‘“‘ Me cook.”

He seemed to enjoy my mystification, for his
next move was to pull a great butcher-knife from a
sheath hanging at his belt, and carefully sharpen it
on the palm of his hand. This was his hunting-
knife, his dinner-knife, the knife he used for cutting
his tobacco and for all the uses possible to imagine,
and 1 wondered what strange new use he had in his
mind for the well-worn tool. When it was sharp
enough, he chose a nice piece of firewood from a pile
at his feet, and began to whittle shavings, looking
up with his characteristic grin to repeat his joke—
* Me cook, eh?”

195

DANIEL AS COOK

When the pile of shavings had grown large ©
enough to earn a contemplative nod of satisfaction, —
he betook himself to his heap of stones. He cleared ©
a space on the wet floor of the boat, and laid a big —
flat stone upon it, then he built a wall of smaller ©
stones around it, and filled up the hollow with ©
shavings and wood. Then he knelt down and struck ~
a match, and carefully lit his fire, poking and puffing —
at it to make it burn. In a few minutes a trail of ©
smoke was streaming away into the air behind us, —
and Daniel came to the triumphant climax of his ©
joke.

«‘ Pujolik, pujolik ” (a steamer), he yelled.

The two men chatting in the bows jumped up ©
with a start; the steersman awoke from his apathy —
and gazed about him; even the man sprawling across _
the oar roused himself and raised his sleepy eyes; ©
and Daniel roared with glee at the success of his ©
little plot. ‘“ Pujolik,” he shouted, pointing to the ~
smoke, and we all entered into the spirit of the thing —
and laughed boisterously.

Soon the sleepy head dropped again; the steerman’s —
eyes once more took on their dreamy stare; the men |
in the bows scraped and filled their pipes, and
returned to their chatting; and Daniel turned to ~
his fire with a chuckle, and said, “ Now, me cook.”
He seemed to have everything at hand, for he
produced a kettle and a keg of water from apparently ~
nowhere with the unconcern of a professional con- |
juror, and then he foraged in the provision-box for
the tin of tea. Oh, Daniel! where did you learn oy
make tea? I am thankful that the Eskimos like
their tea weak, for Daniel’s method was to put a

pinch of tea in the kettle, fill it up with cold water,
: | 196

DANIEL AS COOK

and set it on the fire. In a quarter of an hour or so
Daniel was doling the boiling stuff into tin mugs,
and we were stirring the molasses in to suit our own
fancy. I enjoyed my lunch, for anything hot is
welcome on a Labrador journey. I have had too
many drinks of icy water, or lukewarm tea from a
stone jar carefully wrapped in skins, not to appreciate
Daniel’s tea. Aye, one might fare worse; and well
for the traveller if he has a thoughtful man in the
boat, with a kettle and a heap of stones.

Towards evening we once more entered the ice-
field, and steered slowly between the heavy pans
as they edged to and fro with the gentle swell; and
at dusk we made the anchor fast among the stones of
an islet at the foot of Cape Kiglapeit, and with half
our journey done we sat upon the rocks around the
bubbling tea-kettle, and sang our evening hymn.
The men cleared a space on the floor of the boat,
and spread the sail for an awning, and I laid me
down in my sealskin sleeping-bag and listened to
the lapping of the water. Before morning the
lapping had ceased: the water was frozen round the
boat, even on a July night.

These Eskimos are a hardy folk. I found my
five boatmen sleeping on a patch of moss among
_ the rocks, snoring contentedly in the cold air without
so much as a blanket among them; and they woke
in the morning fresh and bright, and while I was
talking to Daniel over his breakfast cookery I spied
them scanning the ice-field from the highest “ae
of our island.

It was a beautiful spring morning, and the men
sang and laughed as they pushed the boat among the

ice. Daniel was in his element; he skipped from
197

DANIEL AS COOK

one part of the boat to another, always seeming —
to be in the very thick of the work; and once he ©
seized a rope and ran over the ice to haul us through ©
a narrow passage, while the others lolled and filled —
their pipes again, and made remarks about Daniel ©
being a “ Pujolik, ai” (steamer again). Daniel came ©
to a sudden stop, and shouted, “Jump out, all of >
you,” and in a moment we were on the ice dragging ©
the boat across, high and dry, to plump it into the ©
water again on the other side of the floe. At midday —
we anchored against a small iceberg, and Daniel ©
clambered upon it to fill his kettle at a pool that ©
the sun was making in a hollow; then we poled |
on again while the tea was warming over the fireplace

of stones. There was a short rest for the men during ©
the afternoon, when the sails were up and we beat |

to and fro along a sheltered run; but soon the |
captain said something that brought forth a chorus ©
of “ Aha’s,” and caused a general turning of heads. ©
There was a peculiar turbulence about the water in ©
front of us, and there was something familiar about —
the hills around ; there on the right was the begin- ©
ning of the sledge-pass over Kiglapeit, and we were —
entering on the piece of water that never freezes. —
Soon we were tumbling and twisting among the —
currents of a sort of miniature whirlpool, and the is
oarsmen were straining and shouting in time while —
the captain steadied the boat as well as he could
with the long sculling-oar at the stern. I had seen
the black spot of water on the white sheet of ice —
only a month or two before, and many a time as
we passed the place on our winter journeys I had —
wondered why Julius led the dogs close under the 1

rock. All the re ecg he had given me was -
198

eer 2 Son:

DANIEL AS COOK

« Sikkokarungnaipok-tava ” (never frozen); but now
I understood how the power of the battling currents
gives the ice no chance to set, even in the bitter
cold of January.

The men were exhausted by the time the currents
were bubbling half a mile behind us, and nodded
and grinned with appreciation when I suggested
supper. I decided on hot meat; but as we had
only one cooking utensil the tea and meat would
have to take turns, and Daniel chuckled as he
helped me to scrape the mutton out of the tin into
| his useful kettle. We anchored at the mouth of a
| little brook that was trickling through the melting
| snow, and within a few minutes we were eating our
mutton out of our teacups while the kettle sat on
the fire filled with its usual cold water and tea-leaves.
We rinsed our cups at the rivulet, and drank the hot
tea thankfully ; then I took out the Bible, and the
men clustered round me for the evening reading.
I sat afterwards gazing at the lowering sky, while
the captain spread the sail over my sleeping-place
‘in the stern, and the others lay on the moss and
smoked. The captain came to me. “Storm to-
morrow, he said; “ you go to sleep now; we row
all night”; and without another word he called to
the oarsmen and hauled the anchor up from the
water. Good-hearted fellows; how I admired their
pluck. Rather than risk delay they would toil all
night at the oars, because the wind was coming,
‘and to-morrow it might be impossible to travel
- among the i ice-pans.

As I lay in the dark under the sail I could hear
the rhythmic creaking of the boards under the feet

of the captain, as he stood at my head rolling his
199

DANIEL AS COOK

heavy sculling-oar, and I could hear the steady thump >
of the oars against the thole-pins, and the swish and },
drip of the water; and, lulled by the measured },
sounds and rocked by the gentle roll, I fell asleep. 5 |
I woke in the dark hour before the dawning, and |
heard the sound of singing; it was Daniel’s voice, }
crooning a favourite hymn. Presently the others |
took up the song, and sang, so softly, so as not to |
wake me up, but keeping time to the plashing of —
their oars. Hymn after hymn they sang to pass the ©
night away. Soon after sunrise we reached the wide q
open water that narrows towards Nain, and then —
up went the sail and in came the oars, and with the ©
water hissing past us and the ropes groaning and the
mast creaking under the strain of the wind we raced ©
into Nain harbour. a

The people were waiting on the jetty. They ©
shouldered the bags and boxes; the boatmen stowed —
away the sail and oars, and anchored the boat, and ~
then went home to sleep, smiling and good-humoured ©
to the end. et

That was the beginning of my closer acquaintance ©
with Daniel; indeed, we are such good friends that ©
I have even heard him talk about his hunting ex-—
ploits. ‘ Aha,” says Daniel, “when I was a young
man I met a bear, and hadn’t any gun—ai, ai”— |
and up went his fingers, stiff and straight, to show
how his hair stood on end—*“ai, ai, I don’t know |
which was the more frightened, I or the bear; for ©
after we had stood and looked at one another for —
a long time, the bear turned and ran away. If it ©
had not run away, I suppose I should have run ~
myself. I went home for my gun; and next day —

I found its tracks and shot the bear.”
200

DANIEL’S HOUSE

Daniel’s house is an architectural curiosity. For
some reason, or perhaps for no reason at all, it is at
the very end of the village, furthest from the church,
furthest from the store, furthest from the jetty where
the boats are moored. In front is the usual porch,
open to the weather and tenanted by the dogs. ‘The
door is fastened by a wooden latch, which you can
lift from the outside by pulling a bobbin that dangles
from a thong of seal-hide. Inside you find yourself
in a square space where stands an iron stove, and
from a big bubbling pot on the top of the stove
there is generally rising the savoury smell of seal-
meat stew. Seals and skins and wooden pans of
blubber are strewed about the floor; a keg of water
aie near the wall, and a rough bedstead fills a
corner.

But this is only the smaller part of Daniel's
lhouse; the larger part lies further in. It is a big
joblong shack, with a sloping roof and walls hung
{with dingy illustrated papers; and it is placed cross-

}wise, so that the little square part of the house looks
into it from one side. In the middle of the oblong
is a table, surrounded by the customary wooden
boxes that serve for seats and storage places; at
the two ends are sleeping places, roughly partitioned
A peep behind the partitions discloses an array
jof bunks, where the children sleep; a variable array,
jsometimes one above the other like berths on board
ship, sometimes side by side. I have seen the bunks
without sides, and once I found one of them missing
altogether, but this was after one of our Labrador
storms had kept everybody indoors for a couple of
days, and the stock of firewood had dwindled.

After the storm one of the boys drove away to
201

THE OLD WIDOW

the woods with the three dogs and fetched more
firewood, and Daniel himself trotted along to the
store and got an old packing-case and spent the —
rest of the day at the necessary piece of plain
carpentry.

I could see with half an eye that Daniel’s house
had not all been built at one time; it looked like i
two small houses joined together; and it was not q
until Daniel had pointed to’ an old, old woman - |
crouching on the bed in the little square part, a
pathetic figure whom I had overlooked, that I el
upon the real meaning of the queer architecture. —
“That poor old woman,” said he, “was left all :
alone when her husband died. She had nobody i
to take care of her, so my boys and I brought our ©
house along and built it up at the back of the old ~
woman’s hut—takka”— and he pointed to the
oblong portion. “It was a good thing for us all,

Lah oe

for we all have plenty of room, and one stove
warms us all.” Yes, I thought, and in his un-_
conscious way Daniel has done that old widow
a thoroughly characteristic Eskimo act of kindness. —
Poor old soul, she is blind and deaf, and can doll |
little else but sit over the stove and enjoy the |
genial warmth; but an Eskimo likes to work to 4 |
the last, and I have seen even that old blind widow |
sitting behind a snow-wall on the winter ice, patiently
jigging for fish, until the sun began to sink and a
little child came out to lead her home. | 7

Such is Daniel’s household; and Daniel himself, —
an ordinary, everyday Eskimo, goes in and out as ©
he follows his hunting and his daily work. He is |
just an Eskimo, with his little foresight, and his ©

socialistic openhandedness, and his weaknesses and
202

THE OLD WIDOW

his limitations; but the good in him comes from the
one source of all good, and for him some day there
will be the Master's voice—‘“ Inasmuch as ye
id it unto one of the least of these, ye did it

into Me.”

CHAPTER XVI

Out wiTH THE Seat-Hunters—Tue Harpoon—Suootine a SEAL—
A Gruresome Custom—Hav.Line THE Nets

HE last few weeks before the freezing of the’

sea are a busy time for the Eskimos: the whole:
village is in the ferment of a new excitement, for the
seal-hunt is beginning. :
As I strolled along the snow-covered path that
runs in front of the huts I found men and boys:
busily getting their kajaks ready for the water, lift-
ing them down from house-tops and scaffold poles,
searching for leaky places, smoothing the handles of
pautiks (paddles), bustling to and fro with harpoons’
and loops of line, beaming with eagerness, and evi-
dently looking forward to their favourite season.
Every year it was the same, and I watched the pre-
parations with interest ; but my interest was doubled
when Jerry touched my sleeve and said, “ Kaigit,”
(come), and gave me a place in the stern of his|
boat to see the fun. |
If I had thought that I was in for a mad chase
among the waves I was to be disappointed, for I
soon found that nets were the order of the hunt
—nets stretched along the sea-bed in some well-
known and favourite channel or inlet, with a patient
waiting in a smoky hut till morning, when the nets
would be hauled. |
I envied the men in the kajaks; they were after)
seals in the proper old style, with their ingenious

__<_&_&<_$_<_

OUT WITH THE SEAL-HUNTERS

} walrus-tusk harpoons; but there is no room for a
| passenger in a kajak, and I had to content myself
| with watching from a distance. And I had another
|| disillusionment, for Jerry shot a seal with his Win-
i chester rifle. The Eskimo is fond of his rifle; it

makes his hunting so much easier, but it takes a lot
of the picturesque away. And it is chasing the
animals away, too. It seemed a fairly natural thing

for an Eskimo to go after a walrus or a white bear

with kajak and harpoon; the creature must have

felt that it was meeting its great enemy on equal
terms; but when the rifle comes in the man has,

from the bear’s or walrus’s point of view, an almost
uncanny advantage. An unnatural element enters

into the hunt; the animals became more wary; they
are more frightened than ever by the smell of man ;
and away they go to the far north, where they can
fish and gambol unmolested. But happily—from
the picturesque point of view—your Eskimo is too

conservative to give up the ways of his fathers; he

‘still likes to shoulder his kajak or balance it on his

head, and pick his way among the stones to the sea,
and launch it with its weird and ingenious equip-
ment all ready for seal-hunting. The harpoon lies

ready at his right; and as he wields his paddle

he is always on the alert to let drive at the seal
as it pops up for air. The skill with the harpoon

is a thing that the Eskimos have not lost, nor will

they lose it, I hope, till the end of time. When
I look at the harpoon that hangs upon my wall,

my mind travels back across the centuries to a

time when the Eskimos first learnt to hunt; and I
imagine the hunter spearing the seal with a long

straight spear. A seal is a ponderous beast, and
205

THE HARPOON

agile withal; and I can imagine the creature, stung
by the sharp stab, diving with a jerk so sudden that
the spear broke short. This meant losing both seal
and spear; and seals and spears were precious. I
imagine one of these old hunters having a flash of
genius, the sort of flash that sometimes comes to
these native peoples, and saying to himself, «If my
spear must break, I will make a joint so that it may
break without being spoilt.” Or perhaps it came
more slowly, and so some one who could not get a
new head for his spear bored holes in the broken”
pieces with his flint boring-tool, and bound the
broken ends together with seal-hide thongs; and, lo
and behold, next time he used his spear it broke’
again at the mended place, and he bound it up again
wondering. Whether with a sudden inspiration, or’
with the slower method of a gradual evolution from
that mended spear, no man can say; but I imagine
a time dawning when all the spears were jointed at
the head, and the hunters flung them with an added
eagerness because they knew that the problem of
smashed harpoons was solved. The evolution of the’
harpoon went on; the spear was a deadly thing; it
killed, but it did not hold, and so some thoughtful
mind invented a barb.

The tusk which forms the head of the spear
cannot well be carved into a barbed shape, because
it is too slender. So came the next thing: the barb
must be separate, bound on with a thong; and then
the hunter made the discovery of his life. When
the head broke at its joint the thong, of course, fell”
slack—and the barb fell off. Now the harpoon was_
perfect. No need to risk the loss of the precious”

tusk ; the barb would do the work. Let the line that
206

THE HARPOON

held it in place on the tip of the spear be a long one,

with a loop to hitch on to a knob on the shaft, and
with a bladder or float at the other end, thirty or
forty feet away. ‘The seal might dash off or dive as
fast as it liked; the shaft and jointed head would be
shaken free and would float on the water, but there
would be no shaking free from the keen grip of the
barb with its long trailing line and bobbing float.

This little flight of imagination in which I have
indulged is, to my mind, the true explanation of one
of the most marvellous weapons that I have ever
seen—the real Eskimo harpoon.

No skilled mechanic has helped in its making;
it is the pure outcome of native genius, the finished
product of generations of hunting. Over it the

hunter spends long hours of patient scraping and
rubbing and boring and fitting; the socketed joint

is as neat and firm as clever hands can make it;
and the result is that the harpoon in the hands of a
modern Eskimo hunter does what he expects it to
do, and does it every time.

_ The man sits balanced in his dancing kajak, and

flings his harpoon at>the fat neck of the seal as it

pops up for a breath of air. The animal feels the
sudden pain, and dives with a lurch.
The hunter calmly and methodically reaches for

the blown-up skin that lies behind him, and drops

it on the waves. He knows that the harpoon will
bend where the head is jointed, and that the point
of the tusk will slip away from the socket in the
barb; he knows that the line will unloop itself from
the knob on the shaft, and that the shaft and jointed

head will float in a piece upon the water; he knows

that the seal has dived with the barb firmly bedded
207

THE HARPOON

in its flesh, but he knows, too, that the line will
follow, dragging the bobbing float to act as a mark ;
and when he has picked up his spear he paddles _
towards the float and waits for the seal to come up
again. ‘There is no great risk of the barb slipping— |
why, strong fellows like Julius and Paulus can throw —
the harpoon with such terrific force that the barb
sometimes goes clean through the seal. The rest is
easy; the seal comes to the surface, dead, maybe, i
or dazed and faint, and an easy target for the killing
dart. Then the hunter’s pulses throb. “Puijesimavok” —
(he has caught a seal), and he seizes it with a long hook |
with notches in its handle, and lifts it by resting the
notches one after the other on the edge of his frail :

kajak until he can slide the slippery carcase on to
the skin deck in front of him. Then he arranges the”
harpoon and float in their places, and paddles home-_
wards. 4
The harpoon that big Julius gave me hangs upon
my wall, but the float is somewhere on the broad i
Atlantic—probably some prowling shark has made a_
breakfast of it. I tried to bring it home. First _
I put it under the cabin table. “Don’t risk it”
in the hold,” said the second mate, “the rats will
have it.” x
Under the table it stayed for a day or two, but

it was too much for us. Every time we sat down
to meals we kicked the awful thing ; its subtle odour
flavoured our food. Somebody would send it flying
across the cabin floor, and there it would lie until
one of us tripped over it in the dark; it was an
odoriferous nuisance. Last of all I hung it up; but _
as we stumbled across the unsteady floor as the ship_
rolled along, we used to meet that unsavoury shape —
208 a

D I

SHOOTING A SEAL

with our faces. The very look of the bloated thing
took our appetites away. ‘The voting was unanimous
and pressing. ‘‘ Overboard with it,” so I regretfully
cast it to the sharks, and watched it dance upon the
waves, as it had often danced for big Julius when he
had a seal.

But I must get back to Jerry’s boat. Our
particular seal hunt on that November morning was

partly an accidental one. I was sitting in the stern »
| of the boat, watching the rocks and the water. It
| was a new thing to me, this scum of ice that the
waves were flinging up; and the spray from the oars
was freezing as the wind whipped it over the side of
the boat.

I could see the kajaks further out, paddling about
in an aimless sort of way; but I was mostly watching
the line of glistening boulders at the foot of the rocks,
with the oily-looking sea swilling over them, and
‘the sunshine gleaming on the crust of ice which

‘the waves were leaving on them. The man with the
-sculling-pole, who was standing beside me in the
‘stern, suddenly whispered “Puije” (a seal) and his
face grew tense and eager. ‘The oarsmen stopped
and turned to look, while Jerry, the owner of the
boat, hurriedly crammed a cartridge into his rifle.
_ This was all very mysterious tome. I was looking
all round for a head above the water, or for any
bubbles or disturbance that might mean a seal ; but
everything seemed as usual; the dots of kajaks went
‘paddling on, and the sea swilled over the stones.

Jerry seemed to aim at the line of boulders below
_the rocks, and my eyes followed the line of his barrel ;
but I saw nothing until the bang started a splodge of

red on one of the stones. The red seemed to slide into
209 oO

SHOOTING A SEAL

the water, and the boat was off with a jerk. The ©
oarsmen pulled with all their might ; the man at the —
stern was rolling the boat from side to side with the ©
force of his sculling; and Jerry was eagerly looking ~
out and shouting terse directions. ‘There seemed to —
be nothing but the red patch near the rocks, where ©
the water was all stained with blood; but as the ©
steersman brought the boat sweeping round the —
others pulled in their oars and leaned over the side, ©
and in less time than it takes to tell I was helping —
them to heave a big seal into the boat. It came —
slithering over and flopped down, and lay there, limp
and lifeless, with whiskers quivering and big eyes —
seeming to gaze right into mine. It looked just like —
one of the rocks close by; its silvery coat, flecked —
with black and shining with wet, was a perfect imita- _
tion of the black boulders with their coating of ice —
and the water swilling over them. No wonder my ~
eyes could not see it when the steersman did; but ©
Kskimo eyes are different. y

For the moment things seemed strangely quiet : —
there was something so human in the look of those —
big placid brown eyes that I felt almost miserable to
see the innocent thing lying dead. But I came back ~
from my dreams with a start. My boatmen seemed —
to go back of a sudden to their ancestry of hundreds” i
of years ago; for one minute the old original Eskimo ©
in them welled up and drowned all that I knew of —
them. They slit the seal’s throat and sucked its” 4
warm blood.

Our organist, who can render classical tunes from
the oratories for voluntaries in church, and who can —
play any instrument in the band that he chooses ; hell

schoolmaster, who can preach a sermon, and teach -
210

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A GRUESOME CUSTOM

the youngsters their A BC, and their smattering of
geography and arithmetic; the man who sings the
tenor solos in the choir—they were, after all, just
Eskimos, with all the instincts of the Eskimo still
strong within them, not a whit spoilt for the rough
life that is their inheritance. They bent in a group
over that quivering seal, and quaffed the warm blood
that welled out of it. That heartened them! That
made them mighty hunters! That kept the cold out
—and, after all, it was a custom of the people.

They picked up their oars and rowed on, and I
was thankful for what I had seen. ‘The Eskimos are
Kskimos yet. |

The casual visitor in the summer time sees them
salting fish for market, and drinking tea and eating

biscuits; he finds them wearing European clothes,

and great clod-hopping hob-nailed boots, that they

have bought from schooner folk in exchange for skin
‘clothes and home-made sealskin boots: he might

think that the Eskimos of the picture-books were
gone, and that only among the icy solitudes of the
Polar regions, and in the unknown creeks of Baffin’s
Land, were there people true to the type. But no,
even in Labrador, where European missionaries have
been working for a hundred and forty years, and
where everybody is taught to read and write, where
Christianity has taken the place of the uncanny incan-

tations of the witch-finders and the weird chantings of

the priests of Torngak, the Eskimos are Eskimo to
the core. In the church, on the ship, in the presence
of visitors, their native ways are-not much in evidence ;
they are still shy of strangers, and fear to be laughed
at; but with those who live among them, those who,

like myself, travel with them and eat with them and
211

HAULING THE NETS

speak their language, they are the kind-hearted, open- —

handed, raw-meat-eating Eskimos. An Eskimo is no —

less a Christian because he sucks blood from a freshly —
killed seal: he can thank God for his food just as —

well as we can for ours.

I never thought that I should sleep in a green- ©
house on the freezing coast of Labrador, but that is —
how I spent that night. The missionaries at Okak ~
had given up their greenhouse after futile efforts to
grow early vegetables, and had sold it for a mere ©
song to one of the seal hunters. He took it away in —
sections, and put it together at the sealing place, and —
was very !proud of it altogether. By daylight it
reminded me rather of a photographic studio, and —

the properties—rough bedsteads, a battered stove, a

couple of decrepit chairs, and a whole host of nets —
and dogs’ harness and spears and hatchets and rusty ©
guns—would have given me some unique pictures if
I had had the chance to stay awhile. But time was —
precious: I only wanted to see the hauling of the net, —

and then I must go home again.

cold.

The winter that came afterwards was far less —
biting; for the autumn wind, blowing over the
freezing sea, nipped and chilled me as nothing that I
have ever known. It was interesting enough to see
the Eskimos trotting down to the rocks where the
shore-rope lay, and where the float that marked the
far end of the net danced on the black water. I was
half frozen, stamping about to get warm; and they—_
they cheerfully pulled the wet ropes up, chewing at_
their pipes and chatting merrily, and every now and
again stopping to wring the water out of their sodden |

212

We were out soon after daybreak, and it was

HAULING THE NETS

gloves. The cold did not seem to bite them:
« Unét” (what does it matter), they said, “it is our
life: we are made for it”; and they pulled their
stiffening gloves on again to keep the rope from
chafing their hands. They got the heavy seals out
all stiff and dead, and piled them in a sort of stock-
ade to freeze, ready to be fetched home during the
winter. One was partly eaten by sharks. “Sharks
no good at all,” they said; “eat the seals and break
the nets. Sometimes we catch him, but he is no
good except for dogs’ food, and his skin makes fine
sandpaper for smoothing the sledge runners.”

It was only the middle of November, but Okak
Bay was already beginning to freeze at the edges.
The boatmen had to smash the new ice with their
oars, and as we got nearer the jetty our boat stuck,
and one of the men climbed over the side and clung
there, stamping a passage with his heels.

Jerry and his men only stayed long enough to
buy a few necessaries at the store; and I watched
them shove their boat through the passage we had
just made, which was already half frozen, and hoist
_ their sail. With a wave of the hand and a shout of
** Aksunai,” they set their course for the mouth of
_ the bay, and I walked up the jetty to the village.

: For a fortnight the hunters were busy with their
nets and their kajaks; and then the sea was frozen,
_ and the seal hunt was over for the season. The seals
were away to their winter haunts at the edge of the
ocean ice; winter had begun—and the nets were
frozen in. It happens the same way every year: the
people want to make the most of their opportunity,
and they cannot tell exactly when the sea will freeze,

so they leave the nets in the water a day too long
213

HAULING THE NETS

rather than have them up a day too soon; and every ©
year they have the awkward job of hacking them
out. They waste no time, for every minute the ice
is getting thicker. As soon as morning comes, and #
they see the “sikko” (ice) that covers their bay, they —
trot along with axes to tackle one of the coldest bits —
of work that it is possible to imagine.
They only need to free the ropes where they dip—
below the surface, for the net is at the sea bottom, +
and once freed with the axes there is nothing to do ;
but haul. But the hauling! In my eagerness to —
have every possible experience I lent a hand at the ©
rope, but my fingers stiffened round it, and I suffered ;
all the agony of gripping a red-hot poker. My poor —
hands ached for hours. And the Eskimos tugged at —
the rope, and gathered up the meshes all stiffening —
in the wind and dripping with icicles, and piled the
net on the rocks above high-water mark, and rubbed ~
their hands indifferently, and ambled off to get their —
sledges ready. “Home for Christmas” was the :
word ; and in a few days the sledges came racing —
round the bend into Okak Bay, bringing the families f

back to their winter homes at the Mission village. }
‘g
|

Q14 4

CHAPTER XVII

At THE EpGe or tHe Ice—A Tragepy—LaNpING A WaALrUuS
—Martin’s First SEAL

HOUGH times have changed since the old
days, and a man can sell his fish and blubber

and furs at the store and buy flour and ship’s biscuits
and other plain things, the nature of the Eskimos has
| not changed. They still like to depend on the hunt
| for their daily food; they still go out hungry in the
_ morning, and gorge themselves on the raw flesh of
the seals they bring home. This is their custom,
part of their nature, born in them; they are a nation
of hunters, and whatever changes in morals and
_ housing and education passing years have seen among
them, in this one thing they do not change. And
_ well it is that the Mission has been able to keep them
true to their traditions in this matter, for to my mind

_ there is no doubt at all that the life of a hunter is the

ideal life for an Eskimo. It is the life for which he
is especially gifted ; the raw meat that he eats keeps
him fit and well, and the exposure hardens him to
bear the climate of his frozen land. And I do not
base my belief on conjecture only; I base it upon
what I have seen. At Okak, and in the north gener-
ally, the people are broad and plump, with flat faces
and sunken noses; but further south I have seen
lean, sharp-faced Eskimos, with bony limbs and
pointed noses. They are pure-blooded Eskimos, all

of them; they may be lean and bony without any
215

AT THE EDGE OF THE ICE

admixture of other blood; and the cause of the
change lies in the altered food and habits of the people —

themselves.

_ At the southern stations they are more in contact |
with the outside world, and, especially, there are —
English-speaking settlers living among them, cod- —
fishing and fur-trapping. The Eskimos are born ~
imitators; they do what they see others do; and ©
when they have settler folks living among them in ~

little wooden shacks like their own, and passing in

and out among them, it is small wonder that they ~

fall into the settler habits of food and clothing.
They take to garments of cloth instead of the
sealskin that Nature has given them; and they eat

less of their raw meat and blubber and more of ©

the bread and tea and cooked meats of the settlers.

And Nature rebels. The southern Eskimos are,
as a consequence, less hardy than their northern —

brethren; they cannot bear cold so well, but need
more fire, more clothing, and more warm food;
and their children are more puny. This is an un-
fortunate thing, but I must record it for complete-
ness’ sake, because it is one of the dangers that
threatens the Eskimo people as civilisation overtakes
them. If they give up their native foods they will

dwindle and die out. This is my firm belief, and

so I record with all the more satisfaction how I —

found my neighbours at Okak to be real Eskimo —

hunters.

During the long winter that followed the home-
coming of the families to their wooden homes in ~
the village the men were seldom idle. In my ~
visits to the houses I always found the women in ~
charge, and my question “ Aipait nanneka?”’’ (where —

216

| is your husband ?) nearly always brought the answer
| “Sinamut aigivok” (he is off to the edge of the ice

AT THE EDGE OF THE ICE

again). ‘That is the hunting-place that the Eskimos

| love, the edge of the ocean ice, where the seals

sport in the chilly water or clamber on the ice

to rest. Sometimes, when sudden sickness has
called me into the village in the small hours of
the morning, I have heard the scufflings and yelp-
ings of dogs, and have seen dim and shadowy men,

dressed in sealskin clothes, trotting down the track

among the hummocks towards the sea ice, off to the

A 39

«sind.
When I talked about the sina to big Gustaf
he simply said “ We go, eh? Start at four: I will

wake you up,” taking it for granted that if I
‘went at all I would do it in proper Eskimo style.
‘As this was more or less of a pleasure trip I-made

a sort of compromise with good Gustaf’s ideas on

the subject, and the clock was well on towards five
before I met him on the doorstep.

I was fortified with a good breakfast of bacon

and eggs—eggs kept in waterglass since the ship

brought them last summer—but Gustaf would have
none. “No,” he said, “I shall eat by-and-by” ;

and from what I had seen of Eskimo mealtimes I
imagined him disposing of several pounds of seal-

Meat and a pint or two of weak tea when the day’s

work was done.

Nevertheless I saw that he was chewing, pensively
chewing with a steady champ, champ, champ, as he
disentangled the dogs from one another.

“What are you chewing ?”’ said I.
“ Koak ” (frozen), answered Gustaf; and he went

on to tell me that he had got a mouthful of frozen

217

AT THE EDGE OF THE ICE

raw sealmeat; that was plenty; it was the custom
of the people. ‘“ Ananak” (splendid); he said, “it
makes me warm; it gives me sinews; piovok-illa”
(good indeed). I envied him his warmth, for on a
raw bleak morning like that the effects of bacon
and hot coffee are soon gone, and I was forced to
try to trot in the darkness to keep my circula-
tion up.

It was the middle of the morning before w
got among the lumps and hummocks and hollows of
the sina; and there were signs of other hunters on
the field before us. We passed a little snow hut,
with sledge tracks beside it, and Gustaf said,
‘Johannes probably. He came here yesterday: ”
Slept all night, hunt all day.” ;

We were a pleasure party, but Gustaf had/
brought his gun, and was crouching with eager face
among the hummocks. Presently there was a bang,
and he was all excitement. “ Pivunga” (I hit it),
he said. ‘Takka, takka (there, there): where can I-
get a kajak?” |

There was no kajak to be had, and I thought
was going to lose his seal; but no, he was not to”
be beaten; he climbed on to a floating piece of ice.
and paddled off to fetch his prize. There he
crouched on his precarious perch, with I don’t care.
to think how many fathoms of freezing water under
him; and presently I saw him rafting back, with
the dead seal trailing after. I think he seemed
like the spice of danger—or perhaps he did not kn
what danger meant. Yet danger there is, as we :
were reminded not many days later, when a sledell
drove into Okak Bay with an Eskimo boy sitting”

upon it. He sat strangely still, and that was enough
218

e494
hae

A TRAGEDY

to make us think that something was wrong, for an
Eskimo driver is nearly always trotting beside his
sledge. The dogs turned hungrily towards their
accustomed door, but the boy took no notice of
them, but left them in their harness and ran towards
the Mission house. I watched him pass, ashen faced,
panting, stumbling; and a little later I heard his
story. At first incoherently, then with graphic
' gestures and loud lamentations he told his tale; and
here it is.

His name was Rena, and he had started at day-
break for the edge of the ice. His brother, Jakko,
was with him, and they were after seals. ‘They had
| a harpoon and a gun, and they talked as they went
of the splendid hunt they would have on so fine a
day. Tautuk! such clear, calm water and so many
seals swimming about; it was a real day for the sina,
and before they had been there many minutes Jakko
had shot a seal. It was wounded and floated on the
water, lashing with its flappers but too weak to dive.
Oh for a boat or a kajak ; but they had none, and
reach that seal they must. They did what Eskimos
always have done in like circumstances and always
will do; they clambered on a piece of loose ice and

paddled with their hands towards the seal.
They got on fairly well until they were twenty
or thirty yards from the edge of the icefield and the
‘seal was near enough to be speared. Jakko stood up
and poised his harpoon, ready to strike, while Rena
paddled gently with his hands to steady the ice-raft.
‘The change of position must have upset the balance
of the ice, for no sooner did Jakko stand up than it
began to heel slowly over. For a moment they were

too intent on the seal to notice their peril, but as the
219

A TRAGEDY

movement increased it dawned upon them that they ~
were turning over. ;

And then the slow-witted Jakko had one of
those flashes of inspiration that come at such times; 4
with a quick cry of “ Stay where you are, Rena,” he
jumped into the water. Exactly what was in his-
mind we never knew. One thing is certain—he saw
the danger. If both stayed upon the ice it would |
upset and both would be in the water; he could
swim a little, but Rena could not do a stroke. Did
he think to reach the safety of the icefield by swim- —
ming, or did he say, “ Better one to be drowned than
both” ? Whatever the explanation, all that Rena
could say was that he felt the ice-pan rolling over 5
he heard the shout of « Stay where you are,” and saw
his brother leap into the waves. And that was all.
The raft righted itself with a lurch that nearly flung —
him off; but he managed to hold on and paddled
frantically to and fro in a vain search for his brother. —
Poor Rena paddled and paddled and paddled until
his brain reeled and his hands were stiff, but never
a sign did he see of Jakko. Folks do not get drowned
in water like that; it was the Atlantic, two or three
degrees below freezing point, cold enough to numb_
the brain and paralyse the heart of the strongest ;
and so poor Jakko met his death. Like a flash he
had sunk in the dark water, dazed and helpless.
Hours after the catastrophe Rena scrambled from
his frail island on to the safe icefield and flung
himself on to the sledge and let the dogs take him
home. i

This is the true story of two boys that I knew, :
Jakko and Rena Mellik, one of whom threw his life

away to save the other. It gives the Eskimo a lift |
220

LANDING A WALRUS

| towards the heroic in one’s imagination; they are a
| nation of stolid, unemotional hunters, used to facing

death in icefields and canoes and awful storms on
mountain passes, quiet and unconcerned in times of
danger, but capable at a crisis of showing that greater
love that prompts a man to lay down his life for his
friend.

There was gloom for a few days after the tragedy
of Jakko ; but the Eskimos soon forget ; bereavement

‘does not wound them very deeply, and soon the

village wore its usual air of subdued bustle, and away

at the sina the hunters were after the seals.

But seals are not the only quarry; by far the

‘best fortune that a man can have at the sina is to
‘catch sight of a walrus resting on the ice. The great
‘idea is to rush boldly upon the ponderous beast and
‘spear or shoot it while it is too dazed to move. It
thas no chance; it is unwieldy and slow and has
hardly made up its mind which way to turn before
‘the hunter is on it and its life is over. “ Ahaila,”
‘said Gustaf with a grin when I asked him about it,
“Eskimo make a noise and run fast and Aivek
(walrus) stay there all the time and get killed plenty

soon. Go quiet, creep, creep, creep, and old Aivek

‘smell Eskimo and crawl off to the water. Flop,

gone, no catch him now; plenty frightened, no
good.” I knew very well while Gustaf was telling

me all this in his queer, broken English, with
wavings of his hands and expressive grins and

shrugs, that he would be quite ready to embark .in

his kajak and hunt the walrus in its native element.

A walrus is, no doubt, a formidable beast; its
ferocious eyes and bristling whiskers and great gleam-

tusks make a terrible picture; and the very weight
221

LANDING A WALRUS

of its tremendous rush would be enough to frighten -
most folks, quite apart from the uncanny agility
the huge animal displays. But the Eskimo in his
kajak is a match for the walrus; he is every whit as —
active, and twice as sharp-witted; and if the men
at the sina see a walrus disporting himself in the
water they are after him like a shot; and though :
they do not often have the chance that my Killinek —
guide had, of paddling into the middle of a school of i
walruses and calmly harpooning the old bull because
he had the best tusks, they seldom let the odd
ones and twos escape if they get within striking
distance. i

Landing a walrus is no joke. I say “ landing”
because it is the only word to convey the idea of
hauling the great carcase out of the water on to the ‘
ice, and the ice is every bit as good as land to the
Eskimos. What a walrus weighs I do not know, ©
but it stands to reason that a creature fourteen feet
long and fourteen feet round the middle is an
enormous lump to lift. bi

No Eskimo would dream of trying to —
a whole walrus on his sledge; for one thing it~
would roll off at the first lurch, and, for another
thing, I hardly think that any sledge could stand the
strain. Gustaf grinned and shook his head at this |
idea of mine. ‘ My sledge stand anything,” he said ;
“got no nails in it, only fine seal-hide thongs; very
strong ;” and though Gustaf may have overrated his - 4
sledge, I have seen him drive his twenty dogs up to- i
the Mission house with a load of drinking water, twol
great puncheons of it, full half a ton in weight, and _
that should be a fair test of workmanship. “But

another reason for cutting up a walrus at the sina is
22

MOE AOS oS,

“pus 9U0 WOIJ SUOTe [MIO OJ SI poyjour ATUO 9Y} ‘seUOJs OU DI DIB} JI £}eY} WoT ur Aj1eSurs days puv ‘auojs &
apIssuole Yyeio sy} Suliq 0} st AVM OWNIYSY BY, “I[NOYJIP e1OW UDdAD SI JNO 3uI}103 pue ‘[]Fy{S JO [zap poos ve spsou yeley v OJUI BuIII045

IV(VY SIH HLIM OWINSY NY

thi Metis ec
eee ak et
ic ie ‘

MARTIN’S FIRST SEAL

than an old Eskimo custom steps in and says it must
be so.
Every one who sees the capture must have a
share.
The lucky hunter skins his huge catch, and chops
it into chunks, and hands the pieces round. Even
| the interested visitor there on a pleasure trip gets a
great piece thrust upon him.

_ As for myself, I drew the line at walrus. The
flesh is rank and coarse, and even the liver is tough ;
and though I have tried to eat the boiled skin which
the Eskimos find so tasty, I preferred to leave it to

| them—it seemed more natural to let them eat what

they could, and make the rest into whips and sledge
drags, than to loosen my teeth over its exceeding
toughness.
_ Shortly after my visit to the sind I saw a boy
walking along the village path, carrying what looked
like a big and slimy slug.
_ Whatever horrible thing had the lad got? He
carried it by the middle, and it dangled quivering on
each side of his hand. He had an air of importance
with him, and every one he met stopped to say a
word and to have a look at his loathsome handful.
Behind him marched his father and mother, both
looking very proud.

_ “Hai, Martin,” I shouted, “what have you
got 2 ”?

“Kissek”’ (sealskin), he said, and came trotting
along to unroll his package on the snow, and display
a fresh sealskin well scraped and washed and sodden
with brine. “My first seal,” he said, grinning shyly.
Ikpeksak anguvara” (I caught it yesterday).

He seemed in a hurry to be off, so I let him go
223

MARTIN’S FIRST SEAL

without further question, and watched the little ©
procession make its way to the Mission house.
During the evening I saw his father again, and
broached the subject of Martin’s sealskin.

Lukas’s eyes brightened. “Illa, illa,” he said,”
‘** Martin angusimavok ” (Martin has quite caught a~
seal)—as much as to say, “ My son is a grown-up |
hunter now: he is a man.”

“And what was he doing with the sealskin?” 7
said I.

“ Tssumaminik ” (his own idea), answered Lukas; 7
and he wandered off into a long story of the catching >
of the seal. ‘I took him to the sina yesterday, to™
look after my dogs; but there came a seal very
close, and I lent Martin my gun, and he shot it.

“ Kuvianarmék (what rejoicing there was)—there _
were many people there, and Martin cried ‘ Anguvara, —
anguvara, and they all came running to see. He)
knows how to skin a seal and cut it up, because he”
has often seen his mother do it. Illa, he is a man |
now, ernera-una (that son of mine). We all drank”
its blood, and Martin drank too—his first seal—and ©
he cut the skin and blubber off, for they are his own, |
He caught the seal himself, with his own hand.”
Nakomék (how thankful). And he cut the seal in
pieces, and gave everybody a piece, for that is a”
custom of the people when a boy kills his first seal.
He saved the liver for his father and mother, as
is right to do; and he put a big special lump of the —
best meat on the sledge because his mother told him
to do so, and we brought it home.

‘What shall we do with it? Illa”—with a
twinkle—* that is for old Henrietta. She was the-

>
224

MARTIN’S FIRST SEAL

safely into the world, and dressed him in his first
clothes. Surely she shall have a share of Martin's
first seal—and, besides, it is a custom of the people.
The blubber he will sell at the store to-morrow, and
that will be the first money he has earned at the seal
hunt: illa, he is very proud and thankful. Now he
shall go with me to the sina every day, except when
he must stay at home and chop firewood for his
mother, for he is a good boy, ernera-una; and he
will catch seals often, and learn to be as fine a hunter
as his father—better, perhaps, for my eyes are not as
good as they were. And soon, when I am an itok

| (old man) and his mother is a ningiok (old woman)

he will go alone to the hunt and bring seals every
day, and I shall stop at home and chop the firewood ;
and he will have a wife to help the ningiok scrape
the skins, and the kittorngakulluit (little children)

will play about the floor. But I still have nukke

(sinews): I will go to the sina to-morrow, and he

will chop wood. And the skin? The skin of

Martin’s first seal? Illa, issumaminik, it was quite

his own idea. We had been reading how the people
of Israel used to give the first-fruits to God, and

Martin thought he would like to do that with the

first seal he had ever caught; so he took the skin to

the missionary, and that is how you saw him
yesterday.”

295 P

CHAPTER XVIII

Fur-Trappine—A New Year’s Gopsenp—Tue Remnpeer Hunt

O sooner is one hunting season over than —
another begins; or, to be more exact, there

is always hunting to be done of one sort or another, ©
and sometimes two sorts at a time. , ;
I thought that perhaps the men would be rather |
idle after the sledges came home for Christmas, wait- ~
ing for the sea-ice to harden right out to the edge; —
but there is very little idleness in an Eskimo hunter’s ©
life. Sometimes I have gone into one of the huts |
in the daytime, and while the hunter was taking ©
his well-earned rest between his morning tramp to ©
the traps and his strenuous afternoon of wood-~
chopping, I have stepped across his sleeping figure ©
to watch his wife stretching a fox-skin upon a_
wooden shape, and have seen the pot of fox-flesh |
stewing over the stove, ready for a feast when _
father should wake up; and the mother has put ~
down her scraper and wiped her hands and turned ©
the skin with careful fingers, to show me the
lovely fur of a white or red or even a silver fox,
and then has gently turned it back and taken up —
her scraper to plod slowly and cautiously on at |
the work she has to do to get the skin ready for ©
market, her eyes gleaming as she thought of the
dollars and dollars that that skin meant, and of |
all the food and clothing and even luxuries that ~

those dollars would buy—a new roof for the house, |
226 ‘

FUR-TRAPPING

maybe, for it was sadly leaky in the springtime,
or a new gun for the hunter, and clothes for every
one of them, not to speak of a barrel of flour and
a bag of ship’s biscuit and a hanging lamp to burn
paraffin oil !

The hunter is as careful as his wife over those
valuable furs—and woe betide her if he catches her
making a tear or a cut in the course of her scraping !
There must be no spot, no blemish, no mark upon
the skin; and when he finds a fox in his trap, if it
jis not already dead from the cold he dare not risk
spoiling the fur by shooting it, but kneels upon its
ehest and so puts an end to its life.

The Mission pays very generous prices for furs,
and one can easily understand that the result of a
night’s trapping may make a poor man rich at a
single bound. It happened that way in the case of
a poor fellow called Mélé, who lived in a hut on the
hill behind us. All the autumn he lay ill; and the
seal hunt went by and left him destitute. He could
not even hire his net out as some men do, because
he was too poor to own one: he was one of the
kajak men, and was wont to depend altogether upon
his skill with the harpoon. So the boisterous
autumn passed, and never a chance did he get to
go a-hunting: the ice came, and he was penniless.
He was not starving, for the Eskimos are always
neighbourly enough to find food for one another,
and he had help from the Mission and the hospital ;
but his position was a serious one, for he had ‘a
large family to keep, and he had the winter to face
without seals. That would mean giving up his few
dogs, for dogs are hungry brutes, and without dogs

he could neither go to the ice-edge nor fetch fire-
227

FUR-TRAPPING

‘
wood ; it rciabal mean no boots and clothing, nal
frozen meat, no blubber, no lamp oil; it would, in”
a word, mean absolute destitution of just those
things that an Eskimo needs the most. j

I remember the first day that he left his bed,
for I went into the hut and found him sitting on a
box, propped against the wall; his wife was net
crying over a pair of boots that the missionary had
given her to make, and the children were sitting
as quiet as mice upon the floor. Mélé was the
most cheerful ofall. “ Illa,” he said ; ‘‘ God has give i
me back my health, and for that I'am thankful.”

« And what will you do now, Mélé?” "

“ Atsuk; I shall trust my Father—I can do '
nothing else.”

I thought that his simple expression of faitl ;
was admirable, and it was with a queer lump in my”
throat that I turned and left the poor contented]
fellow. I could not help thinking that few folks,
however well-to-do, are blessed with so much peace)
of mind. #
The hand of God, I think, is strangely near to
these simple nature peoples—for so it seemed in)
Mélé’s case. On New Year’s Eve he took his firs |
walk out of doors, and, being a_practical-minded)
man, he thought to turn his walk to good accoun
by shouldering his fox-trap. He slowly made his
way to the nearest trapping-place, a piece of broken
ground dotted with stunted trees, and hidden behind
the hills, and there he set and baited his trap. :
walked home again, and peacefully went to sleep
on his hard bed of boards and reindeer skins. a

On the next afternoon I went into Mélé’s hut

to see how he was getting on, and was surprised to
228 @

A NEW YEARS GODSEND

find several of our great hunters gathered there
discussing something. Mélé himself was sitting on >
his box, with snow on his boots and his face red
with the cold; he was evidently not long home from
another expedition. Hewascryingsilently. ‘“ What
is the matter?” said I. “Tagga” (look there), said
‘Gustaf, our greatest fur-trapper ; “ tagga,” and pointed
to the table. The group drew away and let me pass,
and I saw at once the cause of the excitement; on
the rough boards there lay a beautiful black fox.
“Tgvit (yours), Mélé?” I asked him. “ Ahaila,”
he sobbed. “I went to-day to my fox-trap, my
poor little only fox-trap that I set yesterday and
baited with a piece of the seal meat that Daniel
‘sent us for dinner, and that was too much for us
to finish; and there were many other men there
‘setting their fox-traps ”—* Illa, illa, we were there,”
said some of the men grouped in the hut—“ and
‘I set my little fox-trap by itself, and their fox-traps
‘were all about, here and there among the trees.
_And to-day I went again to look at my trap, and
‘behold, I have a black fox. Tattamnarmék (it is
wonderful): some of the other men had foxes, red
foxes and white, but my trap only has a black one.
Surely God put it there because I am the poorest
‘Man and need it the most. Nakomék.” And it
‘was New Year’s Day!
Could I wonder at the man’s emotion? Could
F I help sharing the excitement of the other trappers
at this stroke of what we in our enlightenment call
“luck”? Mélé and his family were supplied with
_ enough and to spare; they could buy seal meat and
dog’s food and blubber and clothes, enough to last

them the winter through. And I wish the story
229

A NEW YEAR’S GODSEND

could end there: but in fairness to my picture of the
Eskimos it must not.
Mélé was just like all the rest of them, i improvi- q
dent, open-handed, generous to a fault: and so, in
his rejoicing, he called his friends and neighbours
together, and feasted them and fed them, and cele-
brated the wonderful day, and of course before the
winter was over Mélé was a poor man again,
living from hand to mouth and just earning enough”
to keep his family going—but I think that he will —
never forget how plenty came into his house and
built up his health and spirits on that New Year's
Day. It is a true story; and somewhere, I suppose,
there is a wealthy lady wearing a lovely black fox —
fur, little thinking that it is Mélé’s New Year’s
Godsend ! | 4
It sometimes happens that the Eskimo catches a_
Tartar in his fox-trap, if the smell of the putrid bait
of rank and rotten seal meat chances to attract a
wandering wolverine. The powerful brute, finding
itself fast, marches off with the trap, snarling and ~
grumbling at the pain; and before the hunter can
add it to his bag he has a weary trail through the
woods, up and down, to and fro, following the blood-—
stained line of the trailing trap, and at the end of it
all he has to face a sharp encounter with one of the
most dangerous things a man can meet, a mad and
furious wolverine. He is probably thankful to shoot
the beast before it does him an injury—if he has a_
gun with him.
_ Asa matter of fact, the men seldom go to their
traps without their guns. It is not that they have
danger or big game in their minds, but because there
is always a chance of meeting a partridge (rock
230

HOME FROM THE HUNT

Photo lent by Moravian Missions.

The sledge has just arrived from the sealing place with a fair-sized seal upon it, and the people

are collecting, as they always do, to inspect and to pass remarks.

The man on the left is just home

from his traps with a marten; he also will come in for a share of good-natured attention.

WINTER FISHING

Photo lent by Moravian Missions.

During March, when seals are rather scarce and the reindeer hunt has not begun, the

Eskimos depend a good deal on the fish they catch under the ice.

They have a marvellous

knowledge of the haunts of the rock-cod, and walk miles to their favourite places.

|
|

THE REINDEER HUNT

ptarmigan) on the road, and a partridge, eaten raw
and warm, is a real delicacy to Eskimo ways of
thinking.

There is bigger game for those who seek it; I
have heard the scufflings of a wolf among the dogs
when we camped in a snow hut on the mountain
pass, and I have known the drivers stop the sledge
| among the stunted trees on some desolate neck of
land between the fiords, and have watched them
| peering at the spoor of a bearin the snow. “ Tumin-
| git” (his footprints), they say. ‘Old, no good.”

It is remarkable how long one may live in
Labrador without seeing any of these fur animals in
the wild state; as for myself, the nearest I ever got
to a bear was when Paulus came to me and said “ Me
kill a bear—you want some, eh?” and so for next
day’s dinner we had a roast haunch of black bear on
the table, and found it excellent. There are black
bears in plenty for those who have the time or the
opportunity to go after them; as late as 1907, a
party of officers from a visiting ship went up Nain Bay
in a launch, and shot three fine bears in one afternoon.

The Eskimos themselves are always on the tracks
of one sort of animal or another; hunting is their
very life, and as the days of winter went by, and the
excitement of sealing at the sina and trapping in the
woods began to wane, I was not surprised that there
Was something else to occupy their thoughts.
*'Tuktu” began to be the burden of their talk from
morning till night.

The men stood chattering in groups; the women
indoors were sewing and mending from dawn to
sunset and sometimes far into the night; “ Tuktu,

tuktu, tuktu,”’ was in everybody’s mouth—the rein-
231

THE REINDEER HUNT

deer hunt was coming. Presently the word went
round that the Nautsertortut (scouts) were out, and —
the excitement became intense. This was early in ~
March, and all day long the people were going in ~
twos and threes to the top of the nearest hill, to”
watch the sledge track for the home-coming of the ~
scouts. Custom has fixed Easter Tuesday as the ©

|
|
day for the beginning of the hunt, and although the |
:

custom is a comparatively new one, introduced to
give the hunters the opportunity of attending the
special services in the church during the Passion —
Week, it is very loyally observed: no Eskimo would ©
dream of cutting the services to go a-hunting, but so
eager are they to have everything ready, and so full ©
are they of the all-important subject of the reindeer, —
that before Easter comes several of the men will
certainly go to spy out the land and to bring back ©
reports of the probable whereabouts of the deer.
This is especially the case when Easter falls late; _
and when I missed this or that familiar face about —
the village and asked “ Jonase nanneké ?” I was able —
to anticipate the answer, “ Nautsertorpok” (he has ~
gone to scout). The scouts seldom bring home any ©
venison ; they have done their part if they bring ©
home a report, such as “I saw no reindeer yet,” o a
‘‘T have seen tracks, kannitomékérput ” (they seem to |
be near); or, best of all, “I saw three deer in the
distance, sivorlidjut (the leaders) probably.” Then
the excitement bubbles over into energy. Men
stand grouped round sledges on the snow, planing te
and smoothing and polishing the runners, binding up
slack joints and patching weak places with iron
plates; harpoons are shoved among the rafters of the

roof, and kajaks are hoisted on poles, out of reach of —
232 ;

'
i

THE REINDEER HUNT

the prowling dogs; women are stitching as if for
dear life, getting the boots and clothing ready for
the great occasion ; there is stir and bustle all day
long.
To my mind the most interesting of all these
preparations is the mending of the guns. I had seen
them at this odd occupation many times before I

| discovered what they were about.

A man wanders out of his hut with a gun upon
his shoulder and a cluster of friends at his heels. He
sits down upon a lump of ice, and some lad or other
hurries off to set a mark on one of the hummocks,

fifty or sixty yards away. ‘Then the firing begins,

and after each shot there is a hubbub of voices, and

the gun is passed from hand to hand. Perhaps some
| famous hunter tries a shot, and delivers a slow and

weighty opinion, whereupon the voices start jabbering

again. When he thinks the trial has been sufficient
to assure him of the weaknesses of his weapon, the

owner of the gun hammers the barrel with a stone
and tries another shot. It is not likely that one
hammering will satisfy him; perhaps he has

“straightened” it a little too much, and must give

it a few thumps on the other side: he smacks away
at it with his stone, and cocks his eye along it and
hammers again, and tries another shot; and so the
performance goes on, to the accompaniment of serious

and critical remarks, until the gun is “mended.” It

matters not the least what sort of a gun it be; a new
and costly rifle gets just the same treatment as the
veriest old blunderbuss with its stock bound round
with twine: whatever the gun, the barrel must be
made to accord with Eskimo ideas of straightness ;

and the queer thing is that the owner of the gun,
233

THE REINDEER HUNT

once it is properly “mended,” can shoot with the
most deadly aim. It seems to suit him the better for
the hammering it gets. It is no easy matter to get a/
sight of this curious performance, because as soon as 4°
European comes walking along the hammering stops, |
and nothing more than mere gun practice seems ta
be going on. The Eskimos are rather shy of their
characteristic little ways; and, of course, to European
eyes the gun was good enough to begin with, and the
hammering might easily be a laughing matter. A
the days passed onjtowards Easter, and every day
saw the same gun-practice, and gun-cleaning, and_
cartridge-filling, I was surprised that there were no’
accidents; the people seem so careless of their fire-
arms that any one might well expect to hear of!
several fatalities every year. But as I look back over
the eight years that I have known the Eskimos, I
can count the gun accidents on the fingers of one)
hand, and I only know of one that ended fatally.
The fact is that their carelessness is more seeming’
than real, though they do run the most foolish risks’
at times. |
While an Eskimo is engaged on the cleaning of!
his gun it is quite a likely thing for the wad to sticky
The man pokes a plug of greasy tow into the’
barrel, and the harder he pokes the tighter it wedges.
Perhaps he remembers to put the ramrod in at the
other end of the barrel, and push the wad out the’
way it went in; perhaps he heats it red hot an i
makes it burn its way through; but as likely as not,
especially if he is an inexperienced young fellow, he.
loses patience, and loads his gun and tries to fire the’
obstruction out. I knew a man at Hebron who
tried this dodge. ‘The wad was too tightly jammed!
234 ra

THE REINDEER HUNT

even to be shifted by a bullet, and the effect of the
tremendous force was to raise a big blister on the
barrel! Happily the steel was too tough to explode,
or that adventurous young Eskimo would have been
wiped out. He came running to the missionary,
brandishing his blistered gun. “No good,” he said,
“can’t shoot with this gun any more—please cut him
short.” So the missionary filed the barrel off behind
the blister, and thus the gun became a sort of exag-
gerated pistol; and the proud and smiling owner
was in time for the reindeer hunt, and did well.
So much for gun accidents; but I must confess
| that, rare as mishaps are, I used to watch the annual
| gun-tinkering with a good deal of anxiety for the
safety of my apparently venturesome Eskimo
neighbours.

All this is a prelude to the reindeer hunt; and at
last the great day comes, and with shoutings and
| eracking of whips the sledges are away in the dark
of the morning, and the hunters have started. I
have watched them off in the gathering light, stern-
faced and eager, each 'man to his own sledge, and
mostly alone. A boy of thirteen is handy with a
gun, and useful to take care of the dogs; but smaller
folk must stay at home, beseech they never so prettily.
_ The reindeer hunt is no time for useless weight upon
_ the sledge: I knew a man who took his wife with
him, but the lady had to walk the seventy or eighty
miles home, trailing laboriously {beside the sledge,
because there was such a load of meat and skins
that the dogs could pull no more; and up the hills
she tasted the realities of the reputed third-class
passage of the old English coaching days—“ Get off
_ and shove.”

235

THE REINDEER HUNT

On Easter Tuesday morning the sledges make
their start, and track westward up the frozen rivers
and through the winding valleys to the moss-coverec
wilderness where the reindeer find their food. The ©
hunters have no luggage on their sledges: no tent,
no sleeping gear, only a scrap of dried seal meat o
fish for themselves and the dogs, and a gun, an axe, |
a knife, a packet of sticking plaster for the inevitable
cuts, and a tin of grease for their sunburnt lips and~
cheeks—that is their whole equipment, with the ™
- occasional addition of a kettle for the making of a7
cup of Eskimo tea, weak as water, and flavoured
with a mouthful of molasses out of a bottle.

They start together, but after a while they ge
separated, and travel in ones and twos, or alone.
This man’s dogs are slow, and lag behind; the other ©
man wants to try such and such a valley instead of —
the beaten trail ; and so they separate. a

When night comes they build snow huts for or
shelter, and sleep on a bed of dogs’ harness spread on _
the hard snow floor—not for any great comfort there
is in it, but because if they left it outside the dogs
would devour it in the night. In the morning each
man boils his own tea and munches his own solitary
feed of dried meat or ship’s biscuits, harnesses his
team, and drives on alone. Alone he travels where
his fancy leads him: he will find the deer. Solitude
has no terrors for the Eskimo; it wakens his best
instincts; it matters not that he meets nobody, sees
nobody; alone he finds his way to the hunt and back
again, trusting to his marvellous memory for land-
marks, and guided by the stars and the sunrise.

It was a bleak, raw morning when I first saw th

reindeer hunters start: they had their skin clothes 7
236 /

THE REINDEER HUNT

tied round with scarves to keep the wind out, and
they had their heads down as they faced the bleak
gusts. Before ten o'clock a hurricane was raging,
and I feared for the safety of the men. But they
came back, with the storm roaring behind them;
first Jerry, then Abia, then others in twos and
threes, all with the same tale—“ Ajornarpok (it is
impossible), we must start again to-morrow.” “Are
you all safe?” I asked them ; and Jerry counted them
over on his fingers. “ Yes,” he said, “we are all
here: all except Johannes.” “And Johannes, where
is he?” “ Atsuk”—the laconic answer, so character-
istic of the Eskimo—I don’t know.” But I was
anxious. ‘‘ Unét,” they said—as if to say, “Just
don’t you bother your head about Johannes; you
can’t lose him, we all know that. He’s safe enough.”

Next day was stormy again, and there was no
Johannes. I thought of search parties, but the
people only smiled ; and, when the weather cleared,
off they went again with their dogs and their sledges,
with never a word about the missing man. For ten
days nothing happened ; then the women waiting on
the hill yelled “ Kemmutsit, kemmutsit” (a sledge, a
sledge), and I climbed the hill and saw a dot of a
‘sledge and a tiny blur of dogs with an active little
ant of a driver slipping slowly down from the woods
at the mouth of the big river to the wood-cutters’
track over the ice.

“ Johannes, immakka,” they said, and strolled
down the hill to meet him. And Johannes it was,
smiling and happy, and brown and well; proudly

shoving at a sledge piled high with meat and skins,

and shouting and cooing and chuckling to the toiling
dogs.
237

huge disgust of the poor dogs, that had to wait with
what patience they could muster until the scuffling |

of the tumbling mob; and Johannes himself seized”
a great pile of antlers that had topped the load, and >
brought them over for me to choose a pair for myself. ”
I looked at the happy little man; and there was a_
picture in my mind all the time of a solitary little”
fur-clad Eskimo driving a team of ten wolfish and
hungry dogs into the very teeth of an Arctic storm.
“Why did you not turn back with the others,” I”
asked him. Johannes’s eyes twinkled. “It is quite
a long time since I slept in a snow house,” he said, —
“so I built a snow house instead of turning back,
and sat inside and listened to the storm. It was
splendid. And now I am the first home with meat.
I will go and fetch you a leg.” :
Year by year the same scenes come: the start
on Easter Tuesday, the daily tramp of the women
to the top of the look-out hill, the daily chatter
over the work. ‘Three days have passed. “Ah,”
say the women, “our men have found reindeer ; if
they had not they would have come home before
this, for jthey have only three days’ food. Nakomék,
soon we shall be tasting tuktuvinemik” (reindeer
flesh). And the men! It is the time of their
lives! How graphically they tell of the keen moment
when they first see the deer. Cunning fellows, away
they circle so as to come upon them from the lee
side, and if they cannot see the herd, but only find
tracks, they know how far away they are by the ~
238

THE REINDEER HUNT

freshness of the spoor. They turn their sledges
upside down before they get within range, and
aake the team lie down; then the) dogs are safe,
or they cannot drag an upturned sledge. Woe
etide the luckless hunter who lets his dogs get
too close: away they go—no power can stop them—
they are as keen as wolves to do a little hunting
x themselves, and for the nonce they have become
wolves again.

| One man described to me how he came upon
he deer suddenly. He, was driving his dogs along
a winding track, when, on rounding a bend, he
found himself driving into the midst of a herd.
i Kappianarmék,” he said, and waved his arms to
picture his excitement. ‘No good, dogs no good,
tuktu too close”—and there he was, wildly trying
to make the most of what was a very fleeting
opportunity in every sense of the term.

My neighbours liked to talk about the reindeer
font. « Ah,” they said, “it is fine to see the herd
upon the hillsides, all grey and white like the snow
upon the rocks. Yes, there are many tuktu: you
may watch them all day, marching along the hills,
more and more and always more, a great, great
number. Ah, it is fine to watch them—but only
iskimo eyes can see them, because our eyes are
eforhunting. There they graze, digging through
e snow with their forefeet to get at the moss
derneath. Often they dig through much snow,
ore than the height of a man; but they always
d the moss, because they can smell it with their
eet! It is fine to see them—and all the cows have
heir little calves beside them, and the old bull is

seeping watch. When we shoot the cow, the little
239

THE REINDEER HUNT

ealf will not go away; it stays close to its des
mother and noses her and cries. We ‘shoo’ it awa
and make it run after the herd: but sometimes it
will not go, and we must kill it too. That is no)
good ; it has fine meat, and its skin is soft for clothes)
for the baby, but it is better to let it live and!
grow big for next year.”
However much the seals may mean to the)
Kskimos, it always seemed to me that the reindeer)
hunt was the big event of the hunter’s year. There)
never was such excitement as when the sledge
were sighted—such roars of welcome, such a stampede)
over the ice, such a willing crowd to help with the
groaning sledge. The dogs used to look behind them
wondering why the load was so light; they liftec
up their noses and began to trot, and the sledg
came lurching over the rough track among :
hummocks and stopped with a jerk at the hunter
door. In a twinkling the housewife is choosing
side for chops, and within an hour the hut is packe
with friends and relations and casual visitors, chew
ing with the utmost gusto at one of the greate
luxuries they know—the first of the reindeer meat.

240

CHAPTER XIX

Tue Serine Firrrinc—SeAL-HUNTING AMONG THE FLozs—
Tent Lire—Tue Hounrer’s Return

OON after the home-coming of the last of the
reindeer-hunters a new excitement began.
Spring was in the air, though the mice and the little
snow-buntings were the only living sign of it; the ice
was beginning to crack, and the Eskimos were eager
|to get their spring flitting over while travelling was
safe and easy. Labrador was beginning to wear its
spring dress, which is another way of saying that the
snow was melting and making the whole place slushy
in the daytime, and the black rock was peeping
through upon the hillsides. All this came about in
the month of May, when the air was warm by day
and the nights were short and chilly; and when, as
the mornings passed, I discovered that one family
after another had moved off in the small hours, I
made up my mind that I would have a picture of
the flitting. When I walked along the village in the
evening there was a bustle of packing outside many
of the houses, but at four in the morning, when I
came out with my camera, there was nothing but a
glimpse of the tail of a sledge as it careered round the
bend out of the bay. I gathered that the people had
been up most of the night, for when an Eskimo sets
his mind on doing a thing there is very little rest for
him until he has done it. During the day I came

upon Jakobus polishing his sledge runners, a sure
241 Q

THE SPRING FLITTING

sign of a journey, so I asked him to look out for me.
in the morning. At three o’clock I was out on the)
ice, and got a picture of Jakobus and his party start-_
ing in the charming rose-pink light of the rising sun
The fifteen-foot sledge was packed like a furniture
van, with wife and children—to say nothing o
puppies—on the top of the load ; great sides of driec
reindeer meat were tucked among the boxes and bags,
and the naked ribs of the new kajak topped the pile.
There was a suggestion of work ahead in that nakec
framework, for it takes a deal of seal-hunting, and
much planning and sewing, to cover a kajak. Jake
bus was in a great good-humour, and the weathe
was the cause of it. ‘ Ananaudlarmé-é-ék” (splen:
did indeed), he said—referring, I suppose, to the
“going,” for the night air had frozen the sloppy
surface of yesterday into glassy hardness, and the
sledge would slip along with hardly a touch. “Ge
there plenty quick,” said Jakobus, with a gleeful
chuckle for his own sake; and then “ Nakomék
(how thankful); get there before the going is toc
soft ”—and instinctively I thought of the dogs. I
was a happy day for them, poor brutes, to have an
easy run; and I could not help contrasting it with
some of the spring journeys that I have had to make
when the air was heavy and still, and the ice under
foot was soft and slushy, with a couple of feet of
melting snow upon it, and I have had to sit still
because it was impossible to walk or run, and when
the patient animals have plodded listlessly on, hour
after hour, lolling their tongues and panting and
perspiring under the warmth of the May sun
and the burden of their winter fur. I like to”

remember that there are only a few Eskimos who —
242 |

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THE SPRING FLITTING

flog their dogs on days like that, and that no mis-
sionary would travel with a driver who used the
whip. Jakobus’s dogs were in luck’s way; there
| was a keen air to sharpen them up, and no breath of
| wind to hamper them, and the ice was like glass.
“In three hours we shall be there,” said Jakobus.
* Where ?” I asked him.

| Sillutalik,” he answered: and then with a grin,
| * Katro, twenty miles.”

“Katro” was an aside for my benefit: it was
Jakobus’s way of saying “ Cut-throat,” which is the
schooner folks’ grotesque name for the channel that
he favours for the spring seal hunt. He was fidget-
ing to be off, so I took my photograph, and shouted
my ‘“ Aksunai” as he called to his dogs and set his
caravan bowling over the ice. ‘Three or four hours
later, I suppose, he was pitching his calico tent on
the driest part of the sloppy foreshore at Sillutalik,
with his mind full of dreams of thorough Eskimo
happiness—dreams of the splendid seal hunt that lay
before him.

A volume might easily be written about seal-
hunting, for it fills a very big share of the Eskimo
life. The names and habits of the different seals, the
ways of catching them, the uses to which seals are
put—these are things about which an Eskimo can
talk for hours. Food, clothes, boots, lamp-oil,
window panes—these are only a few of the com-
monest of the things that the all-useful seal provides,
and the list of out-of-the-way things is almost end-
less. I found the cooper’s wife industriously making
boots at a time when the people were very short of
reindeer sinew; but it was no secret store of ivalo

(sinew) that she had. Before my very eyes she cut
243

NE
bn:
a
M

SEAL-HUNTING AMONG THE FLOES ~

some tissue from the neck of a dead seal that lay
upon the floor, split it into strips, and chewed anc
stretched them into threads, which she said were ver
good if there were nothing better, and far better
to her way of thinking, than English cobbler’s threa
or catgut. Among the people of Killinek I saw th
women cut the blubber off the seals in sheets, and d
the malodorous membrane from which the oil hz
oozed in the sunshine, and this they would make int
waterproof clothing for the men! No wonder tha
the Eskimo is at his very best in the seal hunt, whe
so very much depends upon it.
When a man finds a blow-hole—that is, a round!
hole in the ice that a seal has made for its occasional)
breath of air—he surveys it critically, and decides, firs
of all, whether it is an old or a new hole, and next!
whether a seal has been at it lately and is likely toy
come again. Ifthe result of the examination is toy
his liking he makes ready for the puije’s next visit
He retires a few paces from the hole, arranges hi
hunting paraphernalia, and lies down to wait. Ther
he stays, as still as a stone, stretched on his face witl
his head towards the blow-hole and his eyes fixer
untiringly upon it. He may be thankful that he
an Eskimo, sleek and fat, with a plentiful circulation’
to keep him warm, and a keen eye trained to his)
task; and, above all, that he has inherited from)
generations of hunters an unlimited patience and 4)
skill that mere practice could hardly be expected)
to give. .
Sooner or later the seal comes up to breathil
with a flash the harpoon is sunk in its fat neck, and’
the line is hissing down into the water as the terrified/

‘creature dives in desperation. The moment the
244 *

SEAL-HUNTING AMONG THE FLOES

harpoon has struck, the hunter leaps to his feet and
rams a sharpened stake into the ice, and on this he
loops his line: he is just in time to brace himself
when the line draws tight and the seal stops in its
career with a jerk. In less time than it takes to tell
the Eskimo is calmly hauling his catch on to the

ice ; and when he has done it, and stoops to take his
| drink of blood, he has done a thing that neither you

nor I could ever learn to do half as cleverly.
Otok-hunting is just as great a test of patience
and cunning as the tedious waiting with its glorious
climax at the blow-hole. An dtok is a lazy thing, a
seal that basks upon the ice in the warm spring sun;
but it is very much alive, and ever on the alert though
it lies for hours as motionless as a log, and at the

least sign or sound of strange movement off it flaps

to the water with grotesque haste. It is important
to see an étok from as far off as possible, and with
this idea in mind some of the Eskimos have copied the
settler folks and are the proud owners of telescopes.
As a matter of fact the Eskimo eye is quite good
enough for all the ordinary purposes of an Eskimo
hunter’s life, and I fancy the telescopes are really
more ornamental than practically useful. The Eskimo
is a cunning fellow: no sooner does he see an étok
than he returns to his tent and arms himself with a
shield of white calico—doubtless, years ago, it was
white sealskin—stretched on crossed sticks. The
wary hunter crawls along so cautiously that the étok
never notices the slowly-moving white shield, and
knows nothing until the hunter, cramped and hardly
daring to breath, is near enough to let drive with his
keen harpoon or his deadly rifle.

As time passes and the ice breaks the spring
245

SEAL-HUNTING AMONG THE FLOES ©

flitters chase the seals among the floating ice-pa
Boats and kajaks are the order of the hunt, and speed _
is the great thing needed, because the seals have los
their winter coat of fat, and sink as soon as they are
dead. A wounded seal dives, or, if too hard hit to —
dive, floats, flapping its flippers, on the surface ; a dead —
seal sinks, and because he does not want to lose it
the hunter who uses a gun makes a frantic dash fe
the place where the seal showed itself, paddling o1
rowing his hardest as soon as his shot is fired. The
men, and boys too, for that matter, are complet
masters of their kajaks, wonderfully speedy and
remarkably safe, but they are not so versed in what
I might call acrobatic kajaking as the Greenlanc
Eskimos. Nothing delighted my Okak neighbours”
better than to be told about the Karalit (Green-
landers); they listened open-mouthed to any news
of these Innuit over the water. and feasted their eyes
on the photographs of the fleets of short kajaks or of
the people in their quaint costumes; they stared witl
wonder when they heard how the Greenlanders cai
turn themselves and their kajaks right side up if they
happen to upset, for the Labrador men have forgotter
how to do that.
Most of the men prefer guns to harpoons for the
spring hunting, and take their stand in a small boat
with a boy as oarsman; the boy’s duty is to steady
the boat on the water, and then to ply his oars with
all his might as soon as the shot is fired; and I have —
watched the boats drifting aimlessly among the floes, —
the man with gun poised ready, the boy with oars —
upon the water, letting the boat turn idly round 2
round because of the impossibility of knowing where :
a seal’s head might pop yo It must be exasperating
24

TENT LIFE

to a man to see the head come up and gaze and sink,
allin a moment, in an unexpected quarter, so that he

| has hardly time to train his gun upon it; but, how-

ever aggravating the seals may be, an Eskimo does
not lose his temper over his hunting; and as for

| swearing—why, the Eskimo language contains no
| oaths, and the few mild remarks that an Eskimo can
| make in his own tongue, such as ‘“ Kappianarmék ”
| (how dreadful), or “ Ai-ai-kulluk” (that miserable
| thing), he makes where they can be applied literally.
| Useless expletives are as foreign to his nature as

they are to his vocabulary.
Not all the families that flit in the springtime go

| seal-hunting among the breaking ice. There are
| some whose thoughts turn to the trout that have
| spent the winter in the ponds among the hills, and
| that are waking from their lethargy for the spring
| run to the sea; and so a good many of the sledges
| are piled high with nets amid all the other luggage,

and the drivers turn the dogs’ noses west instead of
eastward when the sledges reach the mouth of the
bay. As far as money goes, trout-fishing is a more
paying game than seal-hunting; it is always fairly
certain, and salt trout fetches a good price at the
store.

The favourite way is to spread nets in the
shallow: water where the big rivers run into the

sea, and clear them after every tide.

Clearing the nets sounds a small thing, but it
means more than just taking out the great wriggling
fish ; if a man wants to have a good haul every time,

_he needs to clear away every fragment of weed, and

that will take him the best part of the day. Floating

pieces of ice must be towed to a safe distance, and
Q47

TENT LIFE

rents in the net must be mended; and, with one
thing and another, the men are busy enough, and
are quite willing to leave the women to split and
salt the trout. Some of the families are splendid
fisher-folk; one little man calmly answered “Forty —
barrels” when I asked him how many trout he
generally managed to get in a season, .
I had a little trout net of my own in Okak Bay,
just opposite the hospital, and I could often see by —
the commotion in the water whether there were any —
fish in the net. I usually did the fisherman’s work —
myself—when there were only a few fish. But if a
strong tide came and brought twenty or thirty fish,
my hands refused to do it; after half-an-hour’s

dabbling in the icy water my fingers were numb and ~

my wrists used to ache with the cold, and I had to ©
call an Eskimo boy to finish the job. Eskimo hands —
are made for cold work; ice and water are very —
ordinary things for them to touch—and, once again, ~
I cannot but feel that the Eskimo is the very man ~
for the Labrador life. .

The village seemed very desolate while the people
were away at their trouting and sealing places; there
were only the workpeople about the store and Mission —
premises to give the place a touch of life; and during _
the daytime, while they were all at work, it seemed
like some deserted village of a bygone generation.
The windows were boarded up, doors were locked
or fastened with tags of rope, and only the savage
mother-dogs, that nursed their broods of puppies
under the doorsteps, witnessed to the fact that these

huts, looking so tumble-down now that the snow ~

had melted away from them and had washed the

packing of moss out of the crevices, were, after all,
248

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THE HUNTER’S RETURN

the homes of families of hunters who were plying
their craft in their acccustomed way, and who would
return when winter came again and turn them once
more into homes.

After the last of the spring flitters had gone a
change came over the ice on the bay. Cracks and
pools appeared, scraps of wood along the sledge
track sank into the ice by the warmth they absorbed
from the sun, and dotted the path with holes; the
cracks grew and multiplied and met, the tides oozed
upon the beach and the stones began to show, until,
slowly and quietly, the great stretch of ice changed
from a floating sheet to a close-packed mass of
| floating pieces. The tides shuffled them and spread
| them; and, by the last week in June, we were only
_ waiting for a strong west wind to carry the ice away
_to the open ocean and set us a-talking of summer.
As I took one of my walks through the silent village
early in the July of 1904, enjoying all the new ex-
hilaration of open water (for the ice had floated off
_ the day before and made us feel that we were at last
living by the seaside again), I heard a sudden shout.
_A babel of shrill voices was rising from the blubber
yard, where the women were chopping up blubber
for the steeping-tanks; and as I turned to pick my
way along the sloppy path, all criss-crossed and
channelled by scores of tiny rivulets that trickled
from the melting snow on the hillside, I fell in with
_ arushing procession of children and dogs all making
_ for the landing-place. ‘The jetty in front of the
_ Mission house looked busy; it was crowded with
workpeople, all yelling “ Umiat” (a boat) at the top
of their voices. The blubber-women had left their

greasy task, and were there in all the realism of oil-
249

THE HUNTER’S RETURN

sodden sackcloth overalls; the two old widows who ~
had been digging in the garden had flung down their —
spades and were running as fast as their old legs —
would carry them; the cooper had dropped his tools —
and left his shop to join in the excitement; the ©
chimney-sweep, black and grimy, was scrambling § ‘
down from the roof, bursting to tell what he had —
seen from his perch; the missionary had his head out —
of window, with a telescope to his eye, trying to |
make out what was coming ; everybody was shouting © i
and jabbering and laughing. We are a strange folk — .
in Labrador; ours is a quiet, humdrum sort of life, ~
for the most part, and we get into the habit of ’
making a great to-do about the little variate that —
come our way.

After all, this ery of “A boat” only meant that
one of the hunters was coming home; but it was
the first boat of the season, and that made all the
difference. The chimney-sweep had seen it first, ©
and had given a shout that roused the blubber- ©
women in the yard below; and so the commotion
began. Soon I saw the boat for myself, a small i
brown speck on the water, near the southern point —
of the mouth of the bay. ‘Two masts,” said the |
chimney-sweep : to my eyes the thing was only a /
brown dot. ‘Three people at the oars,” said a voice, ~
“and a woman sitting in the bows.” “Yes, yes ©
(chorus), @ woman in the bows.” *Jonasekut, ©
immakka ” (probably Jonas’s people), said the cooper. —
“Tllale” (of course), chorussed the others, “it must —
be Jonas and his two boys at the oars, and Priscilla —
in the bows.” |

Then there was quiet for a few minutes, while the —

brown dot grew steadily larger. At last it turned to —
250

THE HUNTER’S RETURN

| tack and I saw the two masts and the four people.

* Tlla, illa,” cried a shrill old voice, “it is Jonasekut ;
see that white patch on the sail; I helped Priscilla to
sew that on.” ‘“ Boat seems loaded,” said the cooper ;
*‘ plenty seals, maybe.” ‘“ Nakomék ” (how thankful),
said the chorus; and so the excited talk went on until
the boat, with a last long tack, swept gently along-
side the jetty. ‘“Jonase-ai,” was the greeting—a
sort of familiar “‘ Hello, Jonas.” ‘* Ah,” said Jonas,
* Aksuse”’; and he began to hand out the meat. His
giving seemed quite indiscriminate, and everybody
got a share. Children ran home, chattering and
laughing with glee, carrying between them great
slabs of raw flesh, with a train of dogs slinking
furtively behind them in hopes of an accidental share ;
older folks followed more sedately, hugging bowls
and tubs of meat, but all with the same delighted
grin upon their faces in anticipation of that most
luscious of all Eskimo dainties, fresh-killed seal.

I really wondered, as I watched the scene, whether
the hunter had anything left for himself. He had,
_ but no more than enough for a good square meal ; he
was quite content to follow the generous custom
of the people, and share with all and sundry; and
the skin and blubber were his only payment for his
trouble and skill. He carried the liver to the
missionary, and as I watched him I thought that in
his open-handed giving there was just the same spirit
that prompted little John to open the circle at the
dinner bowl to the poor young man.

This home-coming was the first of many, since
the open water gave the people the means of travel-
ling for which they had been waiting; one day it

was a seal-hunter, another a trout-fisher from the
251

THE HUNTERS RETURN

mouth of the big river, and every time there was the —
same shout, the same eager stampede, the same —
chatter of anticipation, the same trot home with |
great hunks of meat or bunches of silvery fish, —
and the same big gipsy-pots bubbling over the open-—
air fires and promising a splendid feast for everybody.

252

4 CHAPTER XX

Cop-risHinc—Trents—A Potar Brar—Mosaqurrors—BuILpING

HE spring seal hunt brings the Eskimo hunting

year to a close; with no furs to trap, no seals

to spear, no reindeer to chase, the Labrador summer

would find the hunter a disconsolate being were it
not for the cod-fishing.

This is the great thing that makes the months of
August and September the busiest in the whole year.
Day in and day out the boats are on the water, with
men and boys sitting in them fishing from morning

till night—aye, and all night long if fish are plentiful.
It is a big test of Eskimo patience, to jerk the bright
leaden lure, with its two barbed hooks, up and down
within a few feet of the bottom of the sea; jerk, jerk,
jerk, hour after hour, when fish are rather scarce and
only the plodder can hope to succeed; but there
come times when the fish are so plentiful that they
are on the hook before it is well sunk, and there
is a spice of excitement in hauling up as fast as your
hands can pull, and dropping the hook again for
more and more and more. But in spite of the
excitement, “jigging,” as it is called among the
_ fishermen, is horribly cold work on dull, bleak days,
and I was not surprised to find the Eskimos wearing
gloves of seal leather on their plump hands to prevent
the line from chafing them. In ordinary times the
men and boys do the fishing, and leave the women
and girls to attend to the splitting and salting, but
253

COD-FISHING

when they light upon one of the vast shoals of fish —
that seem to swarm from place to place, the whole —
family goes out in the boat, and the baby in the
mothers’ hood is the only one that seems too small to —
ply the jigger, and tiny children somehow manage, ~ ¢
with much struggle and determination, to land fish 4
almost as big as themselves. ;

The quantity of codfish is astonishing; they —
must literally teem in countless myriads along the —
coast ; for year after year not only the Eskimos, but —
hundreds of schooner crews from Newfoundland, 4
gather them by barrelfuls—I might say tons—and
year after year the fish are there, seemingly as i
plentiful as ever. It is a fine living, the cod-fishing ; —
the people look to it for their main supply of those ©
things that money can buy, and a good season may ~
not only pay the debts which a man has made at —
the store during the winter and spring, but give him
new tools, a new gun, a harmonium, or even a sofa —
for his house. )

Though the drying of the fish is a thing that —
they have had to learn, they put every bit as much
care into it as they do into all the hunting which is —
natural to them; and I have been amused to see 4
how they scurry when a sudden shower of rain ©
comes and threatens to damp the half-dry fish that —
lies upon the rocks. Fi

This is the time when the ships and the visitors —
come to Labrador; the time when the cod-fishing is _
in full swing, and when, as a visitor once said to me,
“The whole place smells of fish”; the time when —
the Eskimos live scattered along the shores of the
bays and runs. ‘There are a few little huts and iglos

still to be seen, where families have found a good
254

*‘Sulysy JUsWOU s[qQIssod A1aA9 Sutpuads puv ‘ssorp uvedoinyY-twes & ul peo
‘W947 S8AS JOJISIA JOUIUINS dy} SB SOUITYS | B1v ase} puL ‘aj1] JOUIUNS OY} SI SIYT, ‘ed¥e|d Surysy s9WItUNS I18y7 Je ATE JOY pu v}IEZI]

adv] INTL

TENTS

_ fishing-place and return to it year after year; but
most of the people live in tents. Tents are ideal
summer dwellings for a people who are, at heart,
wanderers ; and the Eskimos are restless beings—they
like to follow the call of their hunting, and to make
their temporary home where their work is. Not
many years ago the tents, all along the coast, were
| of reindeer skins stitched together with sinew and
| stretched on poles with the hairy side outward ; and
| no doubt some of the people will live in skin tents to
the end, so loth are they to give up the customs of
their lives.

But calico tents are becoming very popular—and
a good thing, too. They are lighter and airier than
skin tents, and afford just as good a protection from
the weather; but the Eskimos like them because
they are so easily mended. If an August storm
tears a tent to ribbons or hurls it bodily into the
Taging sea, the owner and his family have no
need to spend the rest of the season packed like
Sardines on the floor of some other man’s tent,
waiting for the next year’s reindeer hunt to come
round before making a bid for a new one; no, when
the storm has passed, the father takes his boat and
hies him to the store, and spends a few dollars of his
fish-money on a roll of calico which his wife will very
speedily turn into a tent.

But even this is not the chief reason to Eskimo
minds. Portability is the thing; and a tent that
packs up into a neat little bundle, and can be stowed
away in the bottom of a boat or can be used to cover
the load on a sledge without making the pile too
high and top-heavy for the passengers, is a grand
thing compared with the bulky heap of reindeer skin’

255

TENTS

that takes up so much room. Another reason that
has struck me in favour of the calico tent is that.
calico is not particularly tempting to the appetite of
the dogs. I can well imagine that a tent of dried
reindeer skins might prove quite a toothsome meal
for a pack of famished sledge dogs; but I have
never heard of them devouring a calico tent whole-
sale, though they are not averse to an occasion
chew at the oil-sodden margins. ’

And so the Eskimos spend their summer, dwell-
ing in tents, fishing and drying their catch upon the
rocks, until by the end of September the main rush
of the codfish is over, and the people make their way {
home again to the Mission villages, bringing their
fish bundled ready for the Harmony to take it to
market. ti

In the old days, I suppose, before there was 7
market for their fish, the people did as I found them
doing at Killmek—they hunted the seals and the.
white bears. But the seals are gone northward; :
they have learnt better than to stay about the villages)
of the Eskimos, and nowadays do no more than pas 5
them by in the autumn and the spring. As for the
white bears, a stray one sometimes comes along the
coast with the ice, and becomes the centre of @
furious hunt and the cause of a great deal of chat-
tering about “nennok” (white bear) over the pipes
in the evening; but the most of the nennoks have
retreated to the Button Islands and other desolat
spots where there is no smell of man to disturb
them. >

A beady-eyed little Eskimo came into my room
one evening, hugging a bulky package which he

dumped upon the floor.
256

a eel. Sos

A POLAR BEAR

“ Nennok,” he explained, “half of him: you buy
him, eh?”

He unrolled his package and named his price,
and I found myself examining the hinder part of a
big bearskin.

‘* Where is the rest of him?” I asked; and then
I got the story.

It appears that this man and another were out
in a little boat, jigging for codfish, when they saw a
_white bear swimming in the sea. Like true Eskimos
they fell to their oars, and got the boat between
the bear and the shore, so as to head him off.
They had no gun to shoot him, but this was a
secondary consideration; the great idea was that
_ they were within hunting distance of a nennok, and
hunt him they would. ‘They chased him to and
fro until he began to tire, and then they assailed
him with their oars, hammering prodigiously at his
head. He tried to get into the boat, and at that
they hammered the more, until they had him
stunned and helpless. Then they towed his carcase
ashore, and set about sharing him.

_ It did not happen to strike them that they might
sell the skin and divide the money, and so reap a
reasonable reward for their adventure ; no, they cut
the bear in two, and each appropriated an end.
They were disgusted to find that they had entirely
spoilt the market value of the skin: no trader wanted

| half a bear !

That was the only polar bear that visited Okak
during my five years there; and I have that piece
of bearskin to-day to remind me of the marvellous
pluck of those two Eskimos, who attacked a polar

bear with no better weapons than their oars.
257 BR

MOSQUITOES

Though the summer may sound a very tame
time from a hunter’s point of view, there is one |
occupation that keeps everybody busy. I mean, —

fighting the mosquitoes.

From the beginning of July to the end of —
August, and even later, the summer air of Labrador |
swarms with countless hosts of bloodthirsty gnats. —
The supply is unlimited.

Mosquitoes, we call them; and rightly, I suppose, —
for their scientific name is Culex; and they live
fully up to the evil repute that their family has
for biting and stinging and buzzing and swarming —
around. How, thought I, can one be expected to }
enjoy this lovely scenery, these otherwise delightful —
walks among the hills, if one is compelled to be
encased in a gauze veil and a pair of thick gloves? —
The buzzing creatures perch on the meshes of your ~
veil, and you can see them striving to get through; ©
if you have not adopted Eskimo boots, which reach i
up to your knees, they climb about your knitted
socks, and sit there, biting your ankles between the :
strands of wool, and you can almost imagine them —
kicking their heels with delight at the convenience
of having something to stand on while they ply their
nefarious trade. i

There is a hideous fascination about watching —
the mosquitoes: you may slap and dance, but
however many you may kill there are always plenty
waiting their turn, and the only satisfaction you get
is in the knowledge that new-comers receive an
extra share of their attentions, and that some day >
you will be hardened. The first bites may produce
really alarming results. I am sure that I took all

due precautions, the first night that I slept on shore
258

MOSQUITOES

in Labrador, but a mosquito must have crawled
under my door in the darkness, for in the morning
I could only open one eye, and the question that
greeted me at the breakfast table was, “ Have you
bumped yourself?” The first summer is a sort of
inoculation time ; afterwards the bites do not sting
and itch so badly as the first ones did, and you do
not notice the attentions of the gnats nearly so much.
Some of the oldest residents seem quite hardened or
bite-proof, or perhaps they are too highly flavoured
with tobacco. This last holds good for the Eskimos :
they light their pipes and go about their work,
perhaps with a handkerchief over their necks, perhaps
without, while the mosquitoes buzz about and try to
dodge the smoke.

I used to find a veil rather a trying and “ head-
achey ” thing, and spent a good deal of thought in an
attempt to devise some other method of protection,
but without much success. Measures which act
very well with the milder kind of flies are quite use-
less with our ravenous Labrador mosquitoes.

One adventure that I had in my search for a
gnat-cure may be worth recording. It happened to
be church-cleaning time. The church was in the
hands of a bevy of muscular Christians in the form
of Eskimo women, and as the weather was fine the
missionary decided to hold service out of doors.
Would I give the people an address? It was a
charming day towards the end of July, one of those
calm days when Labrador seems at its best; but, as
is their habit on a warm day, the mosquitoes were
holding carnival. My listeners were all busy fly-
flapping; but a man who essays to deliver an

address cannot be all the time whisking gnats off
| ° 259

MOSQUITOES

his face, nor could I imagine myself talking from —
within the stifling folds of a brilliant green veil, so I —
sought advice. One good Samaritan in the company ©
proffered a compound of his own concoction, which —
he firmly believed would frighten any ordinary —
mosquito yards away; so I willingly and gladly ;
accepted the brown, gummy-looking stuff, and gave —
my hands and face a good plastering with it. Quite — i
likely all the strength or virtue had long ago crane i
rated out of the compound, for it had little or no~
smell, and I realised afterwards, when it was tool i
late, that I had converted myself for all practical — |
purposes into an animated “fly-paper.” For the
first few minutes the mosquitoes seemed rather
surprised ; they buzzed round my face in an angry
swarm, but hesitated to dip their trunks into the |
paint. At last a bold pioneer made a dash for my
nose, and stuck fast. He hummed and buzzed and f
struggled for his life. |

This was more than flesh and blood could
stand; I tried to brush him off—and squashed him! *
That was bad enough; but worse was to follow, 2
for either the gnats were on their mettle, determined
to bite if they died for it, or else the tragic fate
of their leader fired them to frenzy, for they bit
and bit and bit; and by the end of the hour I had
a fine swollen red face, shiny with treacle and all
dotted with black—and somebody told me that
I looked like a currant bun. That was the last
trial I made of amateur compounds: since then I
have confined myself to the “dopes” that are to-
be bought in the shops, and that are really of use.

I spent part of my first July in building the

bridge over the stream that runs between Okak
260 .

BUILDING

Hospital and the church. On the whole my four
workmen got on very well, though they usually
wanted to do things in their own way, and got into
some amusing predicaments in consequence. I once
found them shaking their heads very seriously over
a beam that would not fit. They tried it one way,
and found it too long; then they laboriously heaved
it round the other way, but it was still too long.
They had shaped and notched the ends, ready to
be dovetailed into place, but had forgotten to make
the beam the right length first. What must they
do? Measure it, cut a piece off one end, and shape
the end again. “ Ai, ai,” they said, “kappé, what
a lot of trouble.” And then I stumbled over my
first great difficulty with the Eskimo language. I
rolled out a couple of long words, carefully compiled
from the grammar book, but I really did not know

whether I was saying “ Measure your beams first,

then notch them,” or “Notch your beams first and
then measure them”; and I thought it well to give
a pantomimic demonstration, which I hope they
understood. Anyhow, we built the bridge, and it
looks all right to this day.

I was advised to get some painting done beta
the mosquitoes became too plentiful, so I set a
party of workmen to paint the hospital as soon as
the bridge was ready. The painting passed off
pretty well, excepting that the dogs regarded our

_ paint—made of seal-oil and whiting, boiled together
_—as a special sort of thick soup cooked for their

benefit, and devoured as much of it, and as many

of the paint-brushes, as they could get: they even

licked the walls clean, as high as they could reach,

after the workmen had gone home. On the whole .
261

BUILDING

the workless dogs in the summer time are a nuisance, —
and it was partly on their account that I had to put —
railings round the hospital. The roomy porch was
a haven of peace for them; they used to wait on —
the steps for the door to be opened, and then sneak _
in and snuggle down in the hope of passing un- ©
observed. More than once they got beyond the ©
inner door, and came slinking into the kitchen, —
snuffing and whistling at the smell of cookery; —
and then followed a nightmare chase, we shouting
and stamping, they tearing round and round in ~
a blind hunt for the way out. I sometimes dream —
about them yet; the din was awful: the great ©
hulking things ran round and round, upsetting chairs —
and buckets, yelping and squealing, trying to hide ©
in impossible corners and crannies behind the water
tanks, getting more and more miserable and fright- — !
ened, until at last they found the door and scrambled
through it with terrified faces and drooping tails. —
By the time the painting was done the cod-fishing ~
had commenced, and the men wanted to be off, —
so I let them all go but the two carpenters, staid —
and solid Eskimos both, and clever with their tools. ~
The idea I had in my mind was to put up a series of
posts, five feet and six inches high, fixed firmly to ~
along beam buried in the sand of the foundation; ~
to these posts we could fix a number of hurdle-like —
railings, and have them removable so as to store i,
them in the loft before the winter storms began. —

I fancy that the two carpenters were a trifle jealous _

of each other, for the younger man was the cleverer, _
and took the more responsible part of the work. —
I gave him instructions to make the posts five feet _

and six inches high, and he set to work amiably
262

BUILDING

enough. The other man asked my friend the
missionary, who was acting as adviser and interpreter
and general helper in difficulties, how high he should
make them.

“Five feet, abvalo (and a half),” said the
missionary.

That was the starting-point of quite an argument
between the two Eskimos, and we found it necessary
to explain with the aid of the foot-rule that the two
things were the same. These men both knew
perfectly well how many inches there are in a foot;
but I have often thought, since then, that our two
ways of putting it were not quite the same to
Kskimo minds.

Oh, those railings! I can see in my mind’s eye a
row of tousled little heads, with bright little eyes all
| peering to see what mystery there was behind them ;

and I laugh when I think how those heads used to
disappear if I tapped at the window, and leave
nothing but a row of little knuckles clinging, until
_ first one and then another mop of hair rose slowly to
_ view when those bright little Eskimo laddies thought
that the doctor had gone again.

263

CHAPTER XXI

StarTING THE Hosprrat—THE Crowp ANp THE SINGING

S the village was pretty well filled with people, |
and most of the actual building work was —
finished, I thought it a good plan to open the —
hospital without further delay, and so allow things —
to shape themselves before the busiest of the winter’s ©
bustle began.
The simplest plan would be, I thought, to have ~
the opening announced to the people in church after |
one of the evening meetings, and the missionary ~
kindly agreed to do this. |
The wording seemed ordinary enough to my |
mind—
“To-morrow the doors of the hospital will be
opened at nine o’clock in the morning ”—
Put into literal Eskimo; but it must have been, —

in some way or other, too blunt, for the people were

amazed beyond belief.

I see quite clearly that it would have been better _

to make a long speech of explanation, because the
idea of a hospital was quite new to them; but I ©
know the Eskimo and the working of his mind ina
way that I did not at that time. The fact remains, —
that the people were mystified. I was called back
into the church after the meeting, and found a rather
excited congregation, all eager to speak at once. ,

«Why must the people come to hospital at nine _

o'clock 2”
264

STARTING THE HOSPITAL

“Because it is a custom of all hospitals to fix
some such hour.”

«Then are the people of England always ill at
nine o'clock in the morning? If I expected the
Kskimos always to be ill at a fixed time there was no
sense in it. ‘The people must be ill whenever they
wanted.”

I tried to argue—* Certainly the door is open at
all times for accidents and sudden sickness ”—but it
was useless: they had got the idea into their heads
that some newfangled notion was being thrust upon
them, and, in the natural conservatism of their
minds, they resented it, just as they are inclined to
resent all other innovations at first sight. The only
possible thing to do, as I found all through my deal-
ings with my simple-minded neighbours, was to keep
to my word and let things shape themselves.

« Keep literally to what you say,” said Mr. Simon :
“any change of front makes the people suspicious.”

I turned to the people: “'Tava” (finished), said
I, in my poor halting attempt at their language. “I
shall say no more; the doors will be open at nine
to-morrow ”—and then I left them.

No doubt they went home and palavered the
business half the night; and I was more than a
trifle worried, it seemed such a hard reception for
my cherished plans. But the missionary only smiled.
Tt will come out all right,” he said.

In the morning there were three people waiting
for the opening of the doors of the new out-patients’
department, and I breathed freely again. It was all
right: the people were my friends. That was the
_ beginning; and morning by morning they came,
| with their plaints and ag troubles and their
265

STARTING THE HOSPITAL

requests—odd and ludicrous and touching by turns. a

One of the very first visitors was old Maria, the village
“character,” a well-meaning old body, no doubt,
amiable and friendly, but not over-endowed with
reasoning powers. She gave a very characteristic hint

of her idea of the functions of a hospital by asking —
for ‘“‘eye-medicine,” and rambling off immediately

into a long explanation. ‘I have lost the cover of

my pipe,” she said, and between the words she stooped —

down and hitched a dingy and _battered-looking
tobacco-pipe out of the leg of her boot. ‘I have lost

the cover of it,” she repeated, “and the wind blows ~

the smoke into my eyes and makes them smart. I

want good medicine to cure that”! That word for

“medicine” was one of the first of the many

curiosities of the Eskimo language that I learnt. ~

Their plan is to tack the ending “‘siumik” on to the

name for any part of the body where they have
hat means medicine

for that particular pain. Maria’s request was a

simple one—ije-siumik (eye-medicine)—but some of —

pain, and so build up a word t

the others were not so plain. I remember one

square-shouldered little man, with a heavy mop of ~
hair streaked with grey, who marched solemnly in~
and asked for ‘‘tooth-medicine.” The offer of some —

toothache tincture caused him to shake his head

resolutely. ‘“Oukak” (no), he said, “kikkiamik
piumavunga” (I want the iron sort), and down he
sat, pointing a stubby finger at a huge molar. —
There was no mistaking his meaning, though it —
may seem queer “medicine”; and very soon he 4
was ambling home with many smiles and mutterings _
of “ Thankie” after the “ iron sort of tooth medicine” _

had pulled out the offending tooth.
266

STARTING THE HOSPITAL

After that I thought it well to dig into the depths
of the grammar book, and I found that “siut” or
“siumik’’ literally means ‘something used for.”
That made it plain—‘“ something used for toothache.”
As if to make things more interesting, within the
next day or two I heard somebody talking about
« Sontage-siumik,” meaning his ‘‘Sunday clothes”:
but more was to follow, for a sledge driver came to
ask if I had “ silla-siumik ” (weather medicine)! ‘This
was a puzzler; but the man’s restless eyes, roaming
over my walls, finally fixed their gaze on the baro-
meter, and I discovered that he wanted to know
| what the “silla-siut” (thing used for the weather)
| had to say about to-morrow’s weather prospects!

But it was not all humour at my nine o’clock
hour: never a day: passed without its touches of
pathos, and sometimes of tragedy,too. The Eskimos
are very brave when there is pain to be borne, and
there are many instances of their endurance written
in the books at Okak Hospital. I remember how old
Rebekah came one day, nursing a wounded hand. She
is one of the stateliest of the village grandmothers, an
active old woman of sixty-five, with her teeth nearly
worn to the gums; but, old as she is, she is well able
to take an oar in a boat—or a pair, for the matter of
that—and thinks nothing of trudging to and from
the woods, five miles away, to fetch broken branches
to replenish her stove. With proper Eskimo dignity
she came in and sat down, and composed herself to
tell her tale; and all the while she was hugging her
left hand, swathed in a red bandanna handkerchief.

**T was making boots just now,” she said, “ and
_ the leather-knife slipped and cut my thumb. Ai-ai,

it bled very much, and it was nearly cut off; but I
267

STARTING THE HOSPITAL

had my boot-needle threaded with ivalo (reindeer —
sinew), and I sewed my thumb with that, so that it —
no longer bleeds; and now I have come to let you —
bind it up.” And there and then the brave old —
woman unwrapped her handkerchief and displayed —
her hand, with a long wound neatly sewn up, stitch —
upon ‘stitch, in proper bootmaker’s style! And If
think that the ending of the story is appropriate, for
old Rebekah’s vitality and power of repair proved as
great as her fortitude.

This just serves to illustrate the native indifference
to pain; and even in the worst of sufferings their —
attitude is the same. I have seen them, men and
women, in dingy little huts and in leaky calico tents, —
lying on rough beds of moss and reindeer skins, silent
and uncomplaining, though their faces were blanched
and the beads of perspiration stood out under the ©
strain of physical suffering. 'The very thought calls
forth one’s sympathy; and the pictures that crowd —
before me as I write—pictures of people toiling up ~
the steps of the new hospital, with the marks of pain
upon their faces and a dumb and eager hopefulness ~
shining in their eyes—has left an impression on my ~
mind that time will never efface. A strangely attrac-
tive folk : with children’s fears and childhood’s quaint —
ideas, and childhood’s whims and fancies and un- $
reasoning demands, but with a manly bravery in the ~
face of pain or danger, and a manly mastery of the 7
terrible rigours of their daily work, that call for a
admiration.

Before very long the people were well enough if
used to the working of a hospital to make the nine &
o’clock hour a busy one; and as I was slowly getting ©
a grip on the more everyday parts of the Eskimo —

268

Se en

THE CROWD AND THE SINGING

language I thought it would be an excellent plan to
start each day’s work with morning prayers. I told
the people so. “ Nakomék, nakomék” (how thank-
ful), they said, and nodded, and nudged one another
in their appreciation of the idea. The word I
happened to use—the morning singing—caught their
fancy at once, for singing always appeals to them.
A grim-faced deputation called upon me to know if
it was true that there was going to be singing at nine
oclock. “ Yes,” said I. ‘Then the people want to
know if they may come, even when they are not sick,
just for the singing, and then go home again.” “ By
all means, let them come and help with the singing ; ”
and the deputation retired, smiling and nakomék-ing.

“Now,” thought I, “ we are likely to have a crowd :
what are we to do for benches?” I set a small boy to
scour the village for the two worthies who shared
the honourable and responsible position of public
‘earpenter; and when, after a due interval, they
arrived, having been discovered, without doubt,
sharing a solid meal of fresh seal meat in some
_ hunter’s house, I took them into my plans. Peter
and David, the worthy carpenters in question, nodded
sagely and said “'T'aimak ” (so be it); and we made
our way to the attic. There we attacked the disused
packing-cases, and knocked them to pieces and pulled
the nails out, and planed the boards to a reasonable
smoothness, and by dint of much measuring and
_ sawing and hammering evolved a dozen very decent
little benches out of the pile. No Mission hospital
ever had cheaper furniture than our amateur benches ;
but they served their purpose, and, for all that I know
to the contrary, they are doing duty at Okak Hospital

to this day. On the advice of Peter and David we
269

THE CROWD AND THE SINGING

made them nice and low, to suit the short Eskimo i
legs ; and though we did not paint them they always ©
looked spruce, for Sarah and Valeria, the two char-
women, took no end of pride in scrubbing them. I _
was very well satisfied with the benches—because _
the people liked them. _ ;

As I expected, the room was packed to the |

was the rule, the people began to come sexta By ‘
a quarter to nine there was a crowd on the doorsteps —
—not an orderly queue, by any means, but a jolly- —
tempered mob, clinging to the railings and jostling to ©
get nearer to the door, and constantly reinforced |
by new arrivals from all parts of the village. An ©
avalanche of boisterous humanity surged in and ~
nearly overwhelmed me when I opened the door upon ~
the stroke of nine; but it was only a momentary ~
boisterousness—at a word the avalanche changed to —
an orderly procession. ‘
That is one of the many things I like about the —
Eskimos—they are staid and decorous in their natural —
demeanour, and so, when it does happen that their '
spirits bubble over and they begin to be noisy, they —
are easy to control, a
The benches were full long before the stream of —
people had ceased, but the folks seemed determined —
to get in; those who could not find room on the ~
benches squatted on the floor, and those who were —
unable even to nudge their way into squatting-room —
on the floor stayed in the passage or sat upon the ©
stairs, and we left the door open for their benefit.
It was amusing, but quite characteristic, to observe

that the indefatigable old Maria had somehow
270

MARIA

One of the best known of the Okak Eskimos, and quite
a character in her way. She is a typical Eskimo, with
her square face and high cheeks, small eyes and black
hair; typical, too, in her disposition, stolid, but good-
humoured and friendly. —

OKaAK HOSPITAL

It contains six beds and three children’s cots. The mission ship Harmony is in the
bay. The wooden troughs on trestles convey water from the brook to the mission
house and hospital. When the brook is frozen, water is ladled from beneath the ice
on the big river, and brought in tanks on a dog-sledge.

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THE CROWD AND THE SINGING

managed to get the middle seat on the front row.
Among the people on the floor between the benches
I saw big Josef, the mightiest hunter (and therefore
the richest man) in Okak ; in heathen times he would
have been a sort of king among the people, because
he is both the tallest man and the best hunter among
them; but he seemed quite happy on the floor.

We sang a well-known hymn, and the place shook
with the delightful noise. I can see the picture as
I write, and I think that of all my memories of life

among the Eskimos the most inspiring is the memory

of that crowd of faces, all wrinkling with pleasure
and perspiring with the warmth—and the tremendous
harmony that filled the room. I seem to hear the
music now; the women’s clear voices trilling out
the tune, with the altos and tenors and basses blend-
ing admirably with them. Eskimos always sing

| well, and fall into the parts of the music uncon-

sciously ; their voices are sometimes harsh and gruff,
but they are natural singers. Strange that they have
no music of their own! Weird rhythmic chantings
are all the music that the heathen Eskimo knows ;
but the soil is there in the people themselves, and
music has taken root and flourished among them.
That was the first of many happy mornings; and
though the novelty of the thing was a big attraction
in the beginning, the people still came when the
novelty had long since worn off, and morning by
morning, when nine o’clock struck, our benches were

packed with an eager crowd.

I soon found out what the people liked best ;
new hymns were the great attraction. Sometinies
one or other of the missionaries would translate a
fresh hymn, and I had a day printing it on the

THE CROWD AND THE SINGING

little hand-press that some well-wisher had bequeathec
to the hospital. Next morning a subdued buzz of
delight would greet the distribution of the printec |
sheets. Once, I remember, I was too busy to print—
a new hymn, so I wrote the words on a blackboare |
and hung it up in full view. The result was just
what I ought to have foreseen. When I went intc
the room for the meeting everybody was whispering,
and all through the reading the whispering and
muttering went on in a subdued sort of way; the
people were spelling through the new hymn. |
ought to have known that only a few of them
can read without making the words; they need to”
whisper or speak, or at least shape their lips to the”
sound, before they get the meaning—they have not |
the faculty of seeing sounds as we can. ‘There are”
exceptions; Jerry the organist and Juliana and
Benjamin, the school teachers, can read by thought
without any mouthing at all. But you can imagir
that roomful of people, eagerly spelling their wa
through the words of the new hymn on the black
board and paying not the least attention to anything
else. ‘The new hymn absorbed them.

I seldom found it necessary to play the tune ove
more than once; once they had heard it they sang”
it with a swing, unless it were a melody more dull
and difficult than those to which most modern
hymns are set. q

There was a catastrophe at one of our nine o’clock
meetings, in which one of our little benches played
the leading part. When four good solid Eskimos
were seated on each of them, the benches were
well laden, and I used to feel some apprehension aS
I watched the people Par 3 closer and closer

‘
;

THE CROWD AND THE SINGING

together to make room for “just one more.” I felt
sure that the last straw would be reached some day,
but the people always said ‘“ Namatuinarput ” (they
are quite all right) when I expressed my fears. But
the last straw came—and a very substantial last straw
it was—in the person of big Tabea. She came in
rather late one morning and stood looking round
for a place with all the dignity and consequence
of the prosperous middle-aged Eskimo matron.
There were no empty seats, but a comfortable-
| looking party of village worthies made room—or
| an apology for room—for her in the middle of
their well-filled bench. 'Tabea sat down ponderously
and with deliberation ; there was an ominous creak-
ing and the bench collapsed with a clatter, heaping
its occupants into a wild scrimmage on the floor.
I could hardly keep my face straight when I saw
them shove the broken bench aside and compose
themselves upon the floor as gravely as you please.
If all this had happened out of doors they would
have laughed, I have no doubt, but this was meeting-
time, when folks do not laugh; and it speaks well for
the gravity of the Eskimo character that the ludicrous
spectacle of the collapsing bench and the struggling
dignitaries on the floor did not even cause a titter.
Peter and David stayed behind after prayers, and
sawed the unfortunate bench into strips, which they
used to strengthen others that were beginning to
look rather shaky about the legs; and I took the
precaution of announcing a limit to the seating
capacity of the benches for the future.

273 S

CHAPTER XXII

Beps ror THE Hosprrat—Eskm™mo PatTiENTs—FEEDING _
THE Sick Foiks

HE summer of 1904 saw the hospital finally
launched in full going order, for among the —
many things that the Harmony brought were the
bedsteads and bedding for the wards. I dare say the
sight of so many long packing-cases awoke some
speculation in the minds of the people, and perhaps —
our servant girl only voiced what was in the minds
of many when she asked what they were. of}

She was a bright and active Eskimo girl of eighteen,
rejoicing in the picturesque name of Veronica,
she touched my arm as the boxes came mopar 4 r
the steps, and said “ Hai, sunat ukkoa ?” :
“What are they, Veronica? why, these are the ©
- bedsteads.” |
“ Bedsteads ?”—this with a puzzled air.

« Ahaila, beds for the sick people.”

“Ségle (but why) ?—there are no sick people:
old Emilia is the only person in bed, and she is not
sick, only old.” .
I tried to explain to her that these bedsteads —
were to be put into the wards in readiness for any
possible sick ‘persons during the future. ie

* Ai, ai,” she said, “are there going to be sic
people? Who will it be?” @
I could not help feeling amused at the simplicity —

of her ‘Teasoning, it was 2 on Eskimo ; but
2 ,|

ana

BEDS FOR THE HOSPITAL

I felt sure in my own mind that it was only
Veronica’s first thought, and that after a little
deliberation and a few discussions in the houses she
and all the rest of the people would see the sense in
these beds. |

I laughed at Veronica, and told her “ 'Tukkisilar-
potit” (you will understand), and with that she was
content and went singing back to her work.

I sometimes wondered, as I worked with Peter
and David at the laying of linoleum on the ward
floors, and the fitting up of these bedsteads, how

| the Eskimos would take to the novelty of hospital
| treatment and hospital discipline.

It seemed rather a puzzle, for the more I saw of
the Eskimos the more I knew them to be sticklers

for their own customs and ways; and the more I

talked to them the oftener I heard one or the other
say, “We are different from the Kablunaks
(Europeans).”

Before many days were past men were coming to
say ‘“So-and-so is ill: may we bring him to
hospital?” and when, a few months later, the sea

was frozen and travelling was possible from station

to station over the ice, sledges began to come from
Hebron and Nain, and even further, bringing sick
and injured folks to occupy those beds.

The fortitude that some of these long-distance
travellers displayed was simply marvellous. Young
Jerry, at Hebron, when he stumbled among the dogs
and got his leg smashed by the oncoming sledge,
elected to ride the sixty rough miles to Okak
stretched upon the hard floor of a travelling sledge.
The lad was evidently profiting by his father’s

example, for he told me how, some time previously,
275

ESKIMO PATIENTS

the old man had broken his leg in much the same
way, and the neighbours had treated it in the real old
Kskimo style. They propped the man on a roug ;
wooden bedstead, and buried the broken limb under
a pile of sods!
I gathered that the victim of this primitive method
of setting a limb was very impatient: however that
may be, the treatment was a failure, for the bone
set crooked and the old man goes with a limp. So
young Jerry came to hospital. His drivers, two
fine young fellows, brought him along at a splendid
ace. i
‘ There is no one more unselfish than an Eskimo —
bent on an errand of mercy. ‘The dogs had enough
to do to pull Jerry, so the drivers walked or ran to_
lighten the load and make the pace the faster.
They only rode down the hill from Ittiplersoak”
(The Big Neck), where the track crosses the ridge
that leads out to Cape Mugford, and on some smooth
stretches on the ice towards Okak where the seal-
fetchers had worn a glassy path: for the most of
the way they trotted, with that high-stepping actior
of their short legs that is so characteristic of the
Eskimos—and which, I verily believe, would bring’
them in ahead of the field in a Marathon race
When the sledge turned into our bay the people)
shouted “ Arnak” (a woman), because there was a_
padded figure sitting on the sledge, with the two
men running beside. None but a woman—or a
Kablunik—would sit on the sledge so padded, and’
the dogs were the people’s dogs. But when the
party came a little nearer their delight at the pros
pect of a visit from a Hebron family turned to

alarm. “ Arnaulungitok” (it is not a woman), they
276

ESKIMO PATIENTS

said. “ Ai-ai, kappé, it is a man: he sits still: he
must be kannimajok ” (a sick one).

_ Off they ran to help the sledge over the
hummocks, and to make things as easy as possible

| for the poor fellow who sat there, anxious and weary,

wedged tightly between two planks lashed on the

| sledge. This was in January, the coldest part of
| the winter.

As I helped the people to carry the sledge bodily

| into the hospital I asked young Jerry, “ Are you very

cold ?”
“No,” said he, simply. “I am wrapped in a
reindeer skin—but the jolting, ai-ai, it has hurt my

leaeg.”

Another that I shall not easily forget was a man

| from Nain, who had even a worse experience than

young Jerry. He made the journey of ninety miles

| without a stop, suffering incessant agony from a

huge abscess, grey with pain, but urging his drivers
on and on. He set out on a fine morning, but the

‘second day was stormy, no day for travelling at all.

The poor fellow could not bear to wait. “On, on,”
he said, and the drivers, plucky fellows, never
stopped to camp, but plodded on through the night
and all through the blustering snowstorm of the
second day. It means something to trudge ninety
miles without a rest, and with never a warm bite or
sup—no food, in fact, but dried fish and frozen
seal meat. Late at night they reached Okak, when

all the village was in bed and no one had any

thought of travellers; and I opened the door to

their knocking, and saw the two travel-worn, snow-
powdered figures bearing the sick man between

them.
Q77

ESKIMO PATIENTS ;

Another face that pushes its way to the front é
of my memory is that of little Kettura, a brisk little —
housewife from Nain, who came as a passenger on
her husband’s sledge to have treatment for her eyes. —
There she sat in her bed in the ward, with both eyes —
bandaged over; singing in her clear, sweet voice,
and improvising an accompaniment on the guitar. —
As we went about our work we could hear the
twankle-twankle of the strings and the quaint sound ©
of her singing, hour after hour, tune after tune, as the ~
happy little woman made light of her passing darkness.

When people like these travellers from distant |
stations began to come into the hospital, we cast
about in our minds for some way of making them ~
feel at home. It would never do to pen them up
in a European house, with hardly an Eskimo face —
to see: such treatment would soon have depressed ~
them. No, they must have Eskimo company; and ~
so one of the first questions we asked them was, —
“Have you any relatives here ?” because the Eskimos —
are very keen on recognising even the most distant —
relationships, and would pay a great deal of attention —
to a fourth or fifth cousin from a hundred miles —
away. I call to mind one man who gave a strik-
ingly naive answer to the usual question. He was
a cripple from the north, who came on a dog-sledge, —
and answered ‘“ Oh, yes” when I asked him whether ~
he had any relatives in Okak. “TIllale” (certainly),
he said, “there is so-and-so, and so-and-so—” and —
he reeled off a string of names, most of them quite
unfamiliar to us. “ Ahaila” (yes), I said, ‘“‘naukut
inniksakarkat”” (where have they their dwelling)?

“Tlluvervingme” (in the graveyard), said the

cripple. f
278 he

_ ew

FEEDING THE SICK FOLKS

One of the greatest problems that presented
itself in those early days of Okak Hospital was the
problem of food.

So often the people had said “ Weare Eskimos—
we are different from Europeans,” that I felt certain

| that there was a great truth in it. The missionaries

have done the people a good service in persuading

| them to remain Eskimos in their food and clothing:

there has been no attempt to force European ways
upon them; and I am convinced of the wisdom of
this attitude because I have seen how the natives
degenerate when they take to European food. They

| lose their natural coating of fat to a great extent,
| and need more clothing to withstand the cold; they

become less robust, less able to endure fatigue, and
their children are puny.

Perhaps it is their great tendency to imitate that
explains why, at the more southern of the stations,
where English-speaking settlers live among the
people at their villages, the Eskimos are not so fine
physically as those living in the north. Whatever

the reason, the fact remains: and so I tackled the

feeding problem. When a sick man came to hospital
I told his friends “‘ You may bring Eskimo foods for
him,” and they hailed the suggestion with delight.
I found them a little shy, at first, of letting me know
what Eskimo foods really were. I knew from hearsay
that seal meat and codfish are the staple things; and
for a while the sick folks were supplied with those :

_ but presently friends began quietly to bring other

things—Eskimo dainties, I might call them.
I went into a ward one day, and found a woman
sitting up in bed sucking and chewing at a pile of

raw fish-heads—which she hastily set aside when she
279

FEEDING THE SICK FOLKS

saw me. Presently she took them-up again, and —
fell to with the remark, uttered with a shy smile, —
‘** Mammadlarput ukkoa (these taste very good).”
Another had a lot of what looked like dried dates, —
threaded on a string. This curious collection looked —
very like a necklace, and she kept it by her bedside,
and picked one of the objects off to chew whenever
the fancy seized her. ‘They puzzled me for a time,
until Juliana (who had made my skin clothes, and —
had now become our first Eskimo nurse) enlightened
me. “These are trout-stomachs, dried in the open
air ”’—a real Eskimo tit-bit. iy
I might make a long list of the foods the people ©
brought—seal meat raw, dried, boiled, fried, and even ©
made into a stew with flour and giving forth a most ©
appetising smell; the flesh of reindeer, foxes, bears,
hares, sea-birds ofall sorts; eggs of gulls, sea-pigeons
and ptarmigan, the gull’s eggs especially being some-
times in a half-hatched state, with great, awful-
looking eyes inside them; trout and cod and salmon; ~
the boiled skin of the white whale and the walrus; —
raw reindeer lips and ears—these are only some of
the peculiarly Eskimo dishes that passed before our
eyes; to say nothing of attempts at European ©
cookery, such as home-baked bread, sometimes grey
and sodden, sometimes light and wholesome, so that —
we wondered how Eskimo hands and Eskimo stoves —
could bake so well; roasted dough, as hard as bricks,
a concoction of flour and water baked on the top of
a tiny iron stove ; and even, on festal occasions, dough ~
with currants. %
The list might be longer: as a matter of fact, —
about the only food the people did not bring to —
hospital was their great delicacy—trotten seal-flippers!
280 nh.

FEEDING THE SICK FOLKS

I made the acquaintance of this remarkable item on
the Eskimo menu when I was visiting in one of the
houses on the hill. The people were grouped round
a wooden tub which contained a pile of grey and
slimy somethings; the smell that arose from the tub
was subtle and evil.

“What have you got?” I asked them; and the
head man of the household answered with the
Eskimo word for “ rotten.”

He held a flipper up for me to see, and shook his
head with a smile as he said “ You could not eat that ;
| it would make you ill.”

« Ahaila,” said another man in the circle, “only
strong people can eat rotten flippers. No good for
sick people. [Illile, but we like them, and they do
us good, but the people in the south have forgotten
how to eat rotten flippers, and their stomachs have
grown too weak. Mammadlarpulle (but they taste
good).” How long those flippers had been soaking
in that tub I did not find out, but they were assuredly
gamey.

And the man spoke a truth; the northern
Eskimos are far more primitive in their food than
are the southerners; and yet, all along the coast,
| they still keep to the staple diet of raw meat that
earned for them in olden times the epithet ‘‘ Eskimo
—eater of raw flesh” which, as the story goes, the
Indians hurled at them in derision. And without a
doubt the raw foods suit their peculiar constitution
the best.

I found that the people refuse food so long as
they feel acutely ill: their one cry is “ Immilanga,
immilanga (water, water).” As a consequence they

waste away at an extraordinary rate; and after a
281

FEEDING THE SICK FOLKS

few days of serious illness the quondam plump and ~
ruddy Eskimo is gaunt and haggard, with bony face —
and wrinkled skin; he seems to have grown old all —
of a sudden. But with the beginning of con-
valescence the feeding begins. So soon as the
invalid loses his pains and his feeling of misery his
appetite returns, and he devours immense quantities
of meat and fish, washing them down with copious
draughts of water. This fattening process is even ©
more wonderful to watch than the wasting: the —
hollow cheeks fill out, wrinkles disappear, limbs grow
round and plump again, and the face looks younger ©
day by day. All sorts of food are welcome, but

without a doubt the native foods are the foods that —
work the miracle. I have seen the people sitting up _
in bed, munching strip after strip of tough dried
codfish and leathery nipko (dried reindeer meat), and ~
dipping the strips between the bites into a cup of ©
cod-liver oil kept handy for the purpose. I suppose ©
the oil moistened the meat; at any rate it gave it a
proper Eskimo flavour—but it must be proper
Kskimo oil. I thought to save trouble by getting a
gallon of the real thing from the oil yard; but no,
the sick folks wanted it fresh and home made, and I
besought their friends to bring them some. It came, —
the crude article, brown and nauseous, the result of
frying livers over the stove in the family frying-pan ;
and it was like honey to their palate. They dipped —
and chewed, and sucked and chewed and dipped —
again, and said “ Piovok” (it is good), “ Ananak” —
(splendid). And I wondered, as I watched them ~
eat, whether it was that same all-useful frying-pan —
that gave the subtle and indescribable flavour to all
home-made Eskimo foods, a flavour that the people ©

sii ¢

FEEDING THE SICK FOLKS

seemed to miss in the native cookery done in our
hospital kitchen !

But, after all, the raw foods suit them best, and
they know it. I went into one of the huts during
my first week in Okak, to see a young woman who
was just recovering from a serious illness. ‘The spec-
tacle that greeted me when I opened the door was
enough to alarm the bravest: there sat the woman
on her bed, a gaunt and white-faced spectre, with
her breast bare, and blood dripping from her mouth.
I thought some dire catastrophe had happened.

** Whatever is the matter?” I said. For a moment

she was silent: she was shy: then she said “My

| husband has brought me home akkigivik (a par-

tridge),” and she lifted her hands to her mouth again,
and tore with gusto at the raw, warm flesh of the bird.

When once their shyness was overcome there was
no difficulty about feeding; some native food or
other was always in season, and people were always
willing to bring a share of what they had.

There was genuine sacrifice—sacrifice, I mean,
with the right motive behind it—in those gifts of
meat. Men used to come with dishes and pots,

containing lumps of raw flesh or samples of native
| cookery, and hand them over with ashy smile and a .

laconic “for the sick folks.” And, incidentally, it
Was over a matter of food that my friend Paulus
showed me that the people had really grasped the
meaning of those bedsteads that had puzzled Veronica.

He came one day dangling a leg of reindeer

meat, and handed it to me with a little speech. “I
know,” he said, “that nipko is very good for the
sick folks, They like it, and it gives them nukke

(sinews). Take this meat, and have it made into
283

FEEDING THE SICK FOLKS

nipko. No, I will not take it home, because if I do —
the meat will be eaten up. Keep it here, and have
it dried; then you will have some good nipko for
next winter, to give to the sick people if there are
any.” |
I wonder are the Eskimos unique among the
nations in their disregard of vegetable foods ?
sometimes saw them getting young willow shoots
and one or two other little bits of green, and eating
them as a relish to their meat; but they make
absolutely no attempt to till what soil there is, and |
they do not even make the most of the plants that —
grow. During the short weeks of summer
vegetation springs up in a perfectly marvellous —
manner. I was astonished at the profusion and —
variety of the wild plants and flowers that cover the ©
hillsides. Surely among this wild scramble of plant ~
life there must be some things that are good to com :
I know that there are plenty of dandelion leaves, —
and I have tasted worse things in my time, but the |
people never touch them. It was a marvel to me
how the Eskimos managed to keep free from scurvy
eating so little green food; but the settlers on tk
coast say that seal meat does instead of vegetables,
presumably because there are similar salts in it, anc
so eaters of seal meat are able to keep healthy.
is very likely true, for the Eskimos, whose mai
food it is, are practically free from scurvy. e
Kuropeans could never take to seal meat; it look: $
very black and nasty, and has a queer, inky, fishy
taste that goes against a fastidious palate; but th et :
people only smile at our lack of appreciation of their —
greatest delicacy, and tell us ‘“ Mamadlarpok ” ia
284 ‘a

tastes fine).

AN EskKIMO GREAT-GRANDMOTHER
A great-grandmother is a rarity among the Eskimos. Their hard life and the trying climate make
them old early. Though they marry young, they are mostly worn out before they are old enough to
see a fourth generation.

FEEDING THE SICK FOLKS

I found plenty of mushrooms on the hillsides on
the warm days of August, but the Eskimos would
have none of them: in fact, they were hardly to be
persuaded to gather them. To their minds there is
something uncanny about mushrooms. “ Aha,” they

| used to say, “the food of the Evil One—piungitut

ad).”
: oe though gardening is entirely foreign to the
Kskimo nature, they do not entirely scorn the good
things of the earth.

The berries are a great boon, so much that after
the failure of the berry crop in 1904—because a
plague of mice had eaten the young shoots in the
springtime — there was an epidemic of ill-health

among the people. In most years the scrubby

bushes that crawl upon the ground are loaded with
succulent berries—a truly marvellous provision—and
the people gather them not only by handfuls and
bucketfuls, but by barrelfuls. In October, when
the ground was already becoming powdered with

| snow and frost, and there was ice upon the pools
| among the moss and on the stones that strew the

beach, I have seen the Eskimo women putting their
barrels on tall rocks, with heavy stones upon the lid,
or slinging them over branches of trees, and I have
asked them ‘“ Why ?”

**Soon freeze,” they answer, “high up—not get
covered with snow—good all the winter”; and I

saw that there is a certain amount of provident

laying up for the future in the Eskimo life.

I was glad to see it, for I had thought at first
that these hunters, who go-out after the seals, and feast
high while there is plenty, would have no other idea

than to live literally from hand to mouth. But I
285

FEEDING THE SICK FOLKS

see that where Nature has taught them the need

they lay up store. They dry reindeer meat after
Easter, and keep it for the weeks when the ice i
cracking and seals are hard to find; they dry codfi:
in the summer, simply hanging it in the open air
unsalted, and use it for food between the going of |
the codfish and the coming of the seals in autumn;
they store up the berries for the winter. With)
these exceptions, which are long-established customs, —
the Eskimos are not a thrifty folk. Even the”
promise of a ten per cent. interest on their savings
does not make these hunters see the value of a bank
balance: they like to handle the worth of their”
earnings at once, and in solid substance. J

CHAPTER XXIII

Lizetra—“ Broken ”—Native Docrors—SuperstiTIoNs

Y story of the starting of the hospital would
be sadly incomplete if I did not bring in the

name of Lizetta.
She is a bright, brisk little Eskimo mother, who
gives one about as good an idea of an Eskimo house-

| wife as can be got.

She spends the day in working at the seals that

|her husband brings home, and in making boots and
clothing from the skins; and she has to be pretty

busy if she is to keep the hard-working husband and

| the active little brood of chubby toddlers properly

clad. Scraping skins, cutting out, chewing leather
to soften it, stitching and mending—these are her
household duties; and besides them there are only the

floor-scrubbing, and the wood-chopping for the stove,

to make any real demand on her time. She wastes
no time over cooking—food tastes ever so much
better raw, she says: she is not hampered in the
morning by having the beds to make—they need no

making; just roll up the reindeer skin and spread

the coloured counterpane, and there you are!

Like other Eskimo mothers, she leaves the children
a great deal to themselves, and trusts them to
grow up strong and hardy. But unfortunately,
though in the way of caring for them she does what
other Eskimo mothers do, keeping them well-fed and

_well-clothed, the little folks in Lizetta’s house are
287

LIZETTA

puny, and so it came about that Lizetta was one of}
the hospital’s most frequent visitors. Bright little
soul, in spite of her troubles she was always cheery,
and used to keep the people in the waiting-room in
continual state of merriment with her odd quips an
her lively descriptions of anything that was happer
ing. She and her little troop were blessed with a
extra share of good looks, and made up in spirit for)
what they lacked in bodily vigour; in fact, a jollier!
family you could hardly imagine, and it is no wonée
that we were all fond of them. This little mother’
came running one day to pant out the startling news)
that little Gustaf had “ fallen and broken his back.
I ran with all haste to the hut, with my mind full of}
dismal visions of the brightest of our little schoo
boys moaning on a hard bed of reindeer skins, help=-
less and crippled. But no, little Gustaf was sitting)
on the doorstep, apparently as lively as a cricket)
He had fallen and bruised his back; the pain had)
made him cry; and his mother had used the correct)
word under the circumstances to convey the informa
tion that his back was painful. ‘ Broken” seemed
strong expression: it was the same word that she
would have used in talking of a box smashed up fo
firewood; and I thought it was the cry of “ Wolf
when there was no wolf. One learns to understan
these things; it was no wilful exaggeration, but just
an example of the Eskimo way of expressing things.
If an Eskimo has pain in any part of his body,
that part is, to his way of thinking, broken. And
similarly, if a man has a bad cough, his lungs ar
broken, and so on. The woman who came from the
frozen snow-huts at Killinek to live in her brother's”

wooden house at Okak, and who found the warmth

ES ae

“ BROKEN ”

more than she could endure, used just the same
expression when she said “ My life is broken.” This
is the idea upon which the native doctors work:
something is broken, and must be mended.

In every village there are several of these

| doctors,” men and women who by some means or ©
jother have gained a reputation for unusual skill in
\dealing with sickness. Of medicines they have very
\few. They stew the twigs of the rosemary, and
jmake a sort of tea: this is their panacea, and as it

causes sweating perhaps it has its value. The brain
of the codfish is another of their native medicines ;
and they have a great fondness for giving the raw

jliver of the seal to sick people. Many a time have I

found them munching the little red cubes into which

| they like it chopped.

I found this little habit out because I used to
wonder why seal’s liver was so difficult to get from the

|people. It was the only part of the fishy-flavoured
) seal that we could eat with any degree of enjoyment,
|and during the winter it was often the only form of

fresh meat-food that we could obtain; but in spite of
the good price that we offered only a very few livers
came our way.
Juliana, our first Eskimo hospital nurse, explained
the mystery in a few words: “Tingo (liver) very
good for sick people.”
The fact is that the people set great store by it as
a health-giving food, and there are generally feeble
and ailing ones wanting all the liver they can get:
also, by the way, it is a great tit-bit, so that we con-
sidered ourselves rather fortunate to get any at all.
The native “doctor”’ sets very little store by his

medicines; there is “mending” to be done, and
289 T

NATIVE DOCTORS

accordingly he carries out his treatment by means o
lengthy and mysterious manipulations. The Eskimos
have a general idea of the constitution of the body; —
their constant work upon the seals gives them that;
they know whereabouts the various organs are, but
of the marvellous way in which those organs work
together in the bodily economy they have no idea.
The wonders of physiology are beyond the grasp of
their child minds; they do not puzzle their heads”
over what they do not understand: “'Taimaipok’
(it is so), they say, and are content.
The native rubbers are rather shy of letting
Kuropeans see them at their work, but this is merely
the natural shyness of letting others see them at their
peculiarly Eskimo habits. I have been a privileged,
and sometimes unexpected, spectator a time or two,
and found the manipulator surrounded by a crowd of |
men, all eager to see “ how it is done.” -
There was a very famous rubber in Okak during
my time, a weird old fellow, respectable and hard. |
working enough, rather primitive in his habits, but ‘
possessed of a deformity of the roof of his mouth
which gave his speech an almost un-understandabl
twang. :
I dare say his peculiarity was something of an
asset, for he got frequent employment as a “‘ mender”
of “broken” backs and lame joints. There is no_
doubt that the rubbing was good for many things,
but I think that the native doctors owe some of thei 3
popularity to the old Eskimo conservatism. I have
known people come to hospital with such a tale ¢
this: “I broke my back yesterday at my work,
Old Jakko mended it last night, but it is no better!” |

The work of the native doctors is an innocent
290

s
H
MF
ne

NATIVE DOCTORS

sort of thing; they profess no witchcraft or sorcery
or magic; all that sort of thing has passed away as
the other relics of heathenism pass, and whether it be
in sickness or in health, the Eskimos are a Christian
people.

The idea that parts of the body are Se as an
explanation of various pains, led to some curious
experiences.

The Eskimos did not understand that one disease
could produce aches and pains in different parts
of the body; and it was quite a common ex-
|perience for persons suffering from influenza—that

bane of Labrador—to come and say, “‘ My head is
broken, and my back, and my bones, and my lungs ;
I am always coughing, and my throat, how it hurts,”
and then to ask for head-medicine and back-medicine
and bone-medicine and cough-medicine and throat-
medicine, ticking the items off on their fingers in
| business-like style.
| Usually they asked for “ siumik ” (medicine), their
|favourite way of putting it; but when they had a
string of medicines to recite it was generally “ illinga-
jomik ” that they wanted—that which belongs to this,
ithat, or the other pain. It was necessary to explain
jthat the bottle contained something good for (or
belonging to) all these pains; and then the person
| would look at the bottle, and eye me, and nod, and
say “ Ha,” and walk off with a puzzled sort of air, as
if he wondered how the different medicines in the
bottle would know where to go after they were
swallowed !

It was quite in keeping with their childlike ideas,
and their lack of appreciation of the marvellous com-
| plexity of the human body, that they should, some

NATIVE DOCTORS

of them, think that a medicine good for one thing
must be equally good for another. A man came ir :
one day, and asked for some of “the red-colourec
medicine.”
I asked him, ‘‘ What is the matter with you ?”
He simply said, “ Kujanna (never mind), . want
some of the red medicine.” |
‘No,’ I said, “ not unless I am sure that it is the
sort you need: tell me what ails you.” :
_ T have sprained my shoulder,” he said.
“Then the red medicine that you are talking
about will not be of any use to you: it is not
illingajomik for sprained shoulders.”
« Atsuk,” he went on, “‘ my mate outside says tha
he thinks that red medicine must be the quickest —
kind, for it mended his pain. Give me the red sort.”
Our old friend Maria voiced another side of
the native simplicity when she came shuffling im
one day, bursting with the dignity of her ney
position. Poor old soul, she had been married only
a few days before to a worthy old fellow who was
coming to the end of his days, and who had long
been casting about for a wife to share his solitude.
Maria was concerned for the old man. “I want
knee-medicine,” she said, ‘“knee-medicine for the
old man.” t
Visions of the poor old fellow tumbling over
the stones outside his door and hurting his knees ©
came into my mind.
‘‘ How did he hurt his knees ?” I asked her.
“ He has not hurt his knees at all.” ey
More visions, this time of a poor old man
crippled with rheumatism.
“Ts the medicine for — pains in his knees ?”

NATIVE DOCTORS

«No, he has no pains in his knees.”

Now all this, long-winded though it may sound,
is a perfectly characteristic interview; it gives a
thoroughly true picture of the deliberation of an
Eskimo statement.

“For what purpose does the old man want
knee-medicine.”’

“ Tssumamnik” (my own idea), she said, ‘the
poor old man has such feeble knees; they totter
and shake when he gets out of bed in the morning,
and when he gets up to walk about. I want some
good knee-medicine to cure that.”

Pathos and humour tumble over one another’s
heels when one comes to deal with Eskimo requests,
and of course a good deal of the humour depended
on one’s early struggles with the language.

When I handed a person two pills, and tried
to say “Take one pill to-day, and the other to-

morrow,” it struck me as very ludicrous to find,

after a hot chase through the pages of the grammar
book, that the proper way to put it was “Take
that pill to-day, and its wife to-morrow.” While
I was up in the attic with the two carpenters, I
was startled to hear shrieks of immoderate laughter
pealing from downstairs. Presently our English
hospital nurse, a beginner at the language, came
up and said, “Sarah wants to see you, but when
I tell her to come up here she only laughs.”

When [I got down to the porch Sarah went
off into more fits of laughter. “ Ai-ai, uttilerkét ?”

_ {have you come back), she said. ‘ Una” (that one)

pointing to the nurse—* told me that you had gone
to heaven, and I might go there if I wanted to

speak to you.” It was just an error of pronunciation,

293

3
|
4

SUPERSTITIONS

“ killangme” (in heaven) instead of “kollane ” (in the ¥ |
attic); but for weeks and weeks Sarah chewed ths
joke, and used to burst out meoghing as soon ¢ :
she saw me. ¥
Work among the Eskimos was, to me, a ve
fascinating thing. It is not all easy—nay, it car
be trying and discouraging often enough. Ther
is the touch of fatalism to combat; it is deep-rootec
in the Eskimo nature. When disaster overtakes
a man, he simply says “ Ajornarmat” (it cannot be
helped); and he generally says it without any
sentment. But sanitary reforms caused a raisin
of eyebrows. “No,” said the people, “that is not
the way we do: our fathers never did that: it
not a custom of the people.” ccs
Impatience is another hindrance. The people
willingly take to reforms of which they can see the
immediate benefit; but a teacher must be very
patient and unwearyingly persistent if he wishes
them to adopt habits of which the benefit is more
remote. Impatience and fatalism go hand in hand: |
the Eskimos will stick to their own old ways unless
they can be made to see that other ways are
better ; and unless the innovations are plainly bette:
—to Eskimo eyes—they take to them without
enthusiasm. Mi
I got many a glimpse of native impatience in
the hospital out-patients’ room; even the medicines, —
they thought, must work quickly. f
The young fellow with the paralysed leg, wh 0 F
came to have the electric battery applied, got tired ©
of it after a few mornings, and stayed away. wie 4
we had him fetched he said, “ 'Tukkekangilak (there

is no sense in it); I have had it several times, and i
294

AN EsKIMO WOMAN FROM NACHVAK :

A good example of the northern Eskimo face. This woman is one of the last of the tattooed
Eskimos, and she has no more than a few faint lines on chin and cheeks. Tattooing was a
heathen rite, and has gradually died out.

MEIC AIL Nese. ams | |

i ee

SUPERSTITIONS

my leg is still lame. Why cannot it cure me at
once?” ButI found the Eskimos open to reason ;
they would listen gravely and seriously to little
lectures on elementary anatomy ; under proper super-
vision they were persuaded to try long courses of
treatment in the hope of eventual cure—though
I expect that when they got away to their summer
tents or their sealing quarters they forgot again.

There are not many traces of superstition still
lingering; but in my goings in and out I found a
few. I remember how frightened one young man
became because he had caught a fox with a peculiar
mark upon it: “I shall die soon,” he said.

There are a few little beliefs connected with occur-
rences in the hunt, but they are not often mentioned
in these days ; the fears and fancies of heathen times
have passed away.

But I found the people afraid of the presence of
death: not of death itself—that they meet with
equanimity ; but they are timid to be left with a
dying person, and for this reason, if for no other, a
deathbed is always surrounded by a crowd of friends.
They have the curious custom of pulling down a
bedstead on which a person has died, and building it
up in another part of the house; and they sometimes
go to the extreme of dismantling the whole hut, and
building it again on another site. There seems to be
nothing but superstition to account for these customs,
for I have seen a man pull his hut down and build it
up from the same material elsewhere, while somebody
else put up a new hut on the discarded site. Super-
_ stition it seems to be, and as such it clings to the
Kskimo nature; but I could not help thinking that,

after all, it has a certain sanitary value. ‘ Under
295

SUPERSTITIONS

the bed” is a great place for poking all the useless —
lumber of an Eskimo household, and the shifting |
of a bed into another corner effectively clears the
somewhat unsavoury accumulation.

“Just big children” said my friend the mis
sionary ; and these fears and superstitions are just
signs of the child mind. If you go through a village
in the night, you will see a tiny light glimmering in
many of the houses. ‘The people are fast asleep, but
they like to keep a light burning ; like children, they
are timid in the darkness. But in many a household
the fear has passed away. When night has fallen, —
and the evening prayers have been said, the Eskimo ~
housewife puts out the lamp and the family settles to
sleep in peace. | es

CHAPTER XXIV

Eskimo Covusins—VisitiInc—Ovut witn THE Moror Boar

HAD a rather amusing adventure with the ever-
I cheerful Lizetta during my first winter at Okak.
There was an epidemic of infectious disease arising in
| one or two of the huts, and I knew enough of the
| companionable nature of the Eskimos to fear that
| the sickness might spread from house to house by
| reason of much visiting; so I posted a notice on the
| hospital door to say that there must be no visiting of
| the people sick with this disease. ‘“ Pullarviksakar-
ungnaipok tapkonunga ”—read the notice.

This new departure met with a mixed reception.

Partly it was hostile. ‘That is silly; there is no
| sense in it. We Eskimos always visit wherever we

like ; it is the custom of the people.”
Partly it was fatalistic, with that misunderstanding
| sort of fatalism that one might expect from the
wilder spirits among the people. ‘“IfGod’s will is so,

| the sickness will spread in spite of anything that you
| ean do: and if God’s will is that we should not be
| sick, why may we not visit?” ‘ Ah,” I told them,
**God is teaching men nowadays to take good care:
He expects us all to obey the laws of health. Cer-
tainly He gives us our food, every one of us, but He
gives us strength to earn our food, and hands to pat
it into our mouths.”

And partly it was met by a thoughtful request.

The solemn elders of the village came as a deputation.
297

ESKIMO COUSINS

“We agree,” they said, “that the people ought not
to visit those sick with this catching sickness, anc fe |
the people will obey your words; but what about”
relatives? May they not visit their sick ones, the
sick ones of their own family, and bring them food —
and make them happy?” “It is reasonable,”
answered ; “an exception shall be made for relatives —
who want to care for their sick ones: such people
may visit.” The solemn deputation nodded thei
heads, and withdrew to convey the decision to the
village. After that, whatever bedside I visited,
whatever house I entered, there I almost certainly —
found Lizetta. &

“You ought not to be visiting here,” I told her. ~

‘“‘Oukagle (but no), you are wrong,” said Lizetta, —
taking up her defence with some warmth, ‘ oukagle,
this is my kattangutiarsuk (little cousin).” Upon my
word, the whole village seemed to be Lizetta’s cousin! —
Tllale (but certainly); her mother married the cousin
of my mother ”—that was enough: it meant a proper
kattangutiarsuk. ,

It was only that the keen-witted little woman had —
bethought herself of her numberless relationships, and —
was anxious to help in her own bright way ; for when —
I thought the matter over, I could not fail to see
that most of the Eskimos must be related in some
way or other. They are only a small nation; no
many more than a thousand, all told; and for years —
they have gone on, marrying and intermarrying, :
until it is hard to find a family that cannot claim
kinship of a sort with the greater part of thei
village. The Eskimos have little other prospe
than to go on in the same way, marrying their ow

distant relatives, and I think that this is against ne
298

-
%
rt

i .
ot

se"
sal
v,

ESKIMO COUSINS

chances of increase ; and so I urged them, through
the pages of their little newspaper (!) to widen their
circle by choosing wives from other villages, instead

of linking the families of each village closer and

closer to each other. This close relationship is one
of their drawbacks; and yet, with all their obstacles
and all their drawbacks, they remain the masters of
the frightful difficulties that beset their life ; they are
the real hunters of the Labrador.

Their endurance of cold and fatigue is far greater
than their power of withstanding bodily illness.
Accidents they can face ; their powers of repair after
injuries are truly marvellous; but disease is another
thing. Their resisting power is low, and they are
soon prostrate; and this, I suppose, is the way with
all the nature peoples. And yet their pluck is very
great. As long as an Eskimo feels really ill, or has
severe bodily pain, he looks, and is, very ill indeed ;
but when the actual feeling of pain or distress is
gone, he thinks that he is well again. It is partly
sheer pluck, partly native impatience. The practical
outcome is that an Eskimo invalid takes less care of
himself than a more civilised person would do. He
takes no notice of the onset of disease, but goes on

_ with his work until, from pain or weakness, he can

work no more. And he takes no notice of con-
valescence ; he wants to be up and out and at his
hunting before he can properly stand on his feet. I
once went into a hut to see a young man who had in-

_ flammation of the lungs. He was very ill indeed, and

there was some doubt about his living through it ; his
friends sat watching him with great anxiety. Next
day I found the hut empty! “Ah,” thought I, “his

friends have moved him to another house; ” they have
299

VISITING fe
a great trick of doing that ; so I set off to investigate. —
But the man was not in the village, and I was puzzled —
until a feeble hail from across the water set me on ©
the right track. There was the sick man, alone in a —
little boat, pulling manfully at the oars, and coughing —
as he pulled. “1 am all right now,” he shouted,
“yesterday I was very ill; I had much pain. Now
I am better; I have only got a cough.” He had ~
been to clear his trout net! &

There is plenty of incident in a doctor’s daily ©
round in Labrador, though it be only in the mild /
form of peeps at typical Eskimo life, or small ad-
ventures such as falls down great snow-pits or even i:
a plunge through the roof of a buried hut or a sudden re
and painful descent into a sort of cave full of vicious —
sledge-dogs which was the householder’s buried snow Vi
porch. But visits are not always tame; they can be ©
well spiced with adventure, even on a summer's day. ~

I remember as if it were yesterday the quaint, —
squat figure that came trotting along the beach ~
round the head of the bay; before she reached me
she had begun to deliver her message. “ Come,” she —
said, “come, tuavigit (be quick), my sister—very ill ©
—quick.” She pointed towards a white dot on the —
rocks at the mouth of the bay. ‘“ Tuppivut-una” &
(that is our tent), she went on; “ umiakarkét ?” (have —
you a boat). I had a boat, a rare little tub, but there

:
r

was nobody to help with the rowing. “ Unét,” said
Augusta, and in a few minutes she and I were taking _
turns at the rowing, for an Eskimo woman is brought t
up to take her share of the work in a boat, and ©
besides, we could not spare the time to trudge those —
nine miles over the pebbly beach. The tide was on

the ebb, and we got across in splendid time. Many —

VISITING

a merry hail did we get from the fishing boats as
they passed us on their way home, for all the village
had been a-fishing. It wasa rare reward at the end
of that long pull to kneel on the soft moss beside
the rude couch of reindeer skins, and hear the whis-
pered “Nakomék” from poor tired suffering lips:
life is wonderfully well worth living at moments
like that.

By the time I was ready to start back the tide
had turned, and with it had come the wind. The
little ripples on the bay were all crested with white,
but it was a home wind and a home tide, and I set
out on my solitary journey without any misgivings.
But half-an-hour later I was wishing I had walked
round. My tub of a boat was bouncing about like a
cork, with great waves chasing after it, and I was
struggling to get the oars into the water and keep in
front of the sea. If I got broadside on I was done
for, for the sea was high enough to swamp the boat
in an instant ; and with the water only two or three
degrees above freezing-point a two miles’ swim was
an utter impossibility. So I stuck to the oars till
my fingers were numb, silently praying all the while
for strength to win through. But the biting spray
takes all the nerve out of an Englishman’s fingers,
and my grip began to loosen; and more than once
the boat turned enough to ship a heavy smack from
one of the chasing waves. ‘There was a mighty
bump, and I tumbled backward off my seat. A
rough hand seized my arm as I fell, and I found
myself scrambling into Paulus’s boat, with Paulus’s
round face beaming at me from under a mop of
sodden hair. He had the tiller in an iron grasp, and
with one hand he was oe the painter of my

3801

THE MOTOR BOAT

little boat to a hook. Happily he was the owner of —
a fine big trap-boat, but he had his anxious moments
as he worked her round. There came an almost —
imperceptible lull—a rather smaller wave; Paulus —
flung his weight on the tiller, and ducked as the ©
boom banged over—and we were racing homewards, ~

with the nose of the boat roaring through the water.
We were all right now, and Paulus grinned as he

did his characteristic shake to get the wet hair out of —
his eyes. ‘‘ Very nearly bad job,” said he; and that

was the only reference I ever knew Paulus make to
the fact that he had saved my life.

Happily the need for such adventures no longer ©
exists, since in the summer of 1908 a fine motor boat Bf
came to Okak Hospital as a present from generous- _
hearted friends. ‘This was a great help: it meant |
that the people could easily be visited at their
scattered fishing camps during the busy fishing ©
season, when ordinarily they are away from the
Mission station for days or weeks at a time; and so,
not only would they be under better supervision, but ~
the usefulness of the hospital to them would be ©
vastly increased. And since the summer of 1908
the white motor boat, The Northern Star, has) .

puffed busily to and fro.

I had the pleasure of a trial trip in her before I
left the coast, and, as if to give me a proper apprecia-

tion of the boat’s seaworthiness, the elements com-
bined in the worst storm of the season. We made

quite a large party; myself and wife, my successor _

and his wife, the English hospital nurse, Veronica
the kitchen-girl, and Jerry. We took Jerry the
organist because he happened to be at home, and —

because he knows every rock within miles of Okak;
302

THE MOTOR BOAT

and partly because of his huge delight at meeting a
“ pujoliarsuk” (little steamer) at such close quarters.
« Tattamnarmék,” he muttered, as he scrutinised
the engine—which he for want of a better word,
called “erchavingit” (the ship’s bowels)—‘“ tattam-
narmék ” (how marvellous).

Jerry was pilot, and, like a true Eskimo, he took
his duties seriously: however much he may have
wanted to see the working of the engine, he said no

| more, but climbed out to the bows and pointed out
| the way. Weran the ten miles to Uivak, and had a

good look at his black, rocky sides; and I thought of

| the time when I saw him standing in the dark
| winter water, and when Johannes led the sledges

over the top; but Jerry tapped me on the shoulder

and said—“ We go home now: bad storm very soon.”
Round we steered, and nosed into the rising sea.
The boat travelled splendidly, and did good work

against the wind; but soon the waves were crashing

| over the roof of the cabin, and Jerry, experienced
| man, began to be alarmed. As long as we faced the
sea it was not so bad, but to get to Okak we had to

run five miles broadside on to the storm. We tried
it for a short distance; but, though I believe the
boat might have got through safely, it seemed
useless to risk so valuable a thing—to say nothing of
our lives—when an hour or two might bring calm
weather again. Jerry breathed a fervent ““Nakomék ”

when he saw the boat swing round and head for

shore: he and I were soaked to the skin, and the
water was slopping over our boots as we stood in the
bows, but that was no new thing for him; his
“ Nakomék” was not for a prospect of warm feet and

dry clothes, but for the turning of our backs on the
303

THE MOTOR BOAT

tossing channel that we had tried to cross, and whose |
treacheries he knew so much better than I. a ii

We dropped our anchor in a little rocky bay, out |}
of the worst of the wind, and set ourselves to wait.
But the storm only grew worse; it swung us roun¢
and round at the end of our chain until Jerry fearec
that the anchor would drag. Night fell with the
wind still howling, so we made up our minds to
night in the boat, and foraged under the seats for
eatables. We found some tins of meat and a bag of
ship’s biscuit, rather tough and unpalatable food fo
folks who were half seasick; however, we were
thankful not to be starving, so we gnawed our
supper like rats and settled for the night. There
was not much sleep to be had, though we rolled
from side to side, and counted sheep in our minds;
the ceaseless howling of the wind, and the constant
shocks as the waves battered against our walls,
would have kept most folks awake; and Jerry, the
only one of us who could, perhaps, have slept
through the din, stood watchful and serious, leaning
against the window of the engine room, with his
eyes upon the anchor chain and the line of white
breakers that marked the shore. Each time I turned
to try a fresh position, there he stood; and in the
grey of the morning, when I woke from a drowse, he __
was just as I had seen him last, silent and faithful,
watching and waiting for the wind to drop. -

We got ashore during the morning in the little __
punt that we had with us, and varied the monotony ©
by finding some water to drink. Then came break- 4
fast, a nameless mush of meat and biscuits and —
water, mixed in a meat-tin and warmed over a smoky _
fire among the stones; but once again I found that — on

THE MOTOR BOAT

unger is the best sauce, and somehow I was not
urprised at the way in which Jerry and Veronica
macked their lips over it. It was not until late in
he afternoon that Jerry judged it safe to venture on
he sea again, and then we ploughed along the
roughs of huge waves, with the water flopping
imply over us, and so reached Okak.

“ Tikkikise?” said Jerry's wife, big placid
Sibilla, “ uigarnerasugi—ai, ai” (I thought I was a
widow)—and then the two of them laughed and
trudged away home together.

Writing about the motor-boat makes me think of
Benjie.

Benjie is a small boy of five or six years, and the
way he comes into the story is this. He was romp-
ing on the jetty with some other boys, when he
tumbled into the seven feet of water that we have
at high tide. The others clambered down and fished
}him out, limp and half choked, and brought him to
| hospital.

The child was soon fit to be out of doors, and we
sent him home to his grandmother’s hut, where he
acted as general servant, wood-chopper, water-fetcher,
fisherman, and what-not in the intervals of his play.
Thereafter he seemed to be always hanging about
the hospital steps, becoming strangely eager and
restive at the least sign of our going out of doors:
this turned out to be his odd way of showing his
appreciation of the comforts of hospital—he had
elected himself chief general helper on the motor
boat! It was useless to talk to the boy; he was as
deaf as a board; but he used to wait out there with
_dog-like devotion for some sign. A thumb jerked

over one’s shoulder meant oars to Benjie, and away
305 U

THE MOTOR BOAT

he would trot to fetch them, and then over the bez ch :
to haul the little punt inshore; and by the time I

got to the water’s edge he was in his place with the -

two oars in his baby hands, and a smile of utter con
tent on his fat, round face. Sometimes, when there
was a breeze blowing, it seemed a shame to let the
little fellow row; but once when I took the oar
away, he cried so piteously that I had no choice bu
to sit in idleness in the stern and watch the lusty
little arms tug away.

He always “helped” to get the anchor up, and
then wanted to take his turn at the wheel; but |]
deprived him of this last honour after he had graze
the side of the buoy that marks our Okak reef, and
had given me my one and only view of the jagged
rocks within a few feet of our planks. :

Faithful little Benjie! His stolid face and gleam.
ing eyes come to my mind every time I think of the
Okak motor-boat, and so I have given him a place i
my chronicle of the starting of a Mission hospita
among the Eskimo hunters of Labrador.

CHAPTER XXV

Eskimo Hovses—Makinc Winpows—StTussorn LEARNERS—A
Scrupsine-srusH Episope—My Harmontum—A Concert

URING my years in Labrador I saw very
little of the old snow-house dwellings. They
have vanished, except in the neighbourhood of Killi-
nek and some other parts of the north, and all that I
saw of them was on my sledge journeys. But snow
houses on sledge journeys are but poor imitations of
the real thing, with its ice-window and its carefully
jointed protecting wall and porch, and especially its
luxurious size. Sledge drivers always misjudged my
length, at least until they got used to me. They
persisted in building snow houses to fit Eskimos, and
I had usually several inches of spare leg to tuck away
| into some cramped and awkward position. Julius
| and Johannes got to know my measure, so to say,
} and used to build mea house in which I could at
least stretch comfortably if I lay across the middle ;
but, as I was about to say, in spite of their popularity
as shelters on journeys, snow houses as permanent
winter dwellings are getting very scarce.

At all the older villages the people have huts of
wood or turf. I feel something like a war-horse with
the scent of battle in its nostrils when I think of
those old turf huts—iglos, the Eskimos call them.
_ What unsavoury dens they were! How I thirsted
_toabolish them! Description is a poor thing when
an Eskimo iglo is the cs a but try to imagine a

ESKIMO HOUSES

thing that looks like a heap of turf or sods, with a
battered tin pipe sticking out of the top, and a long,
low tunnel leading up to one side, and you have a
fairly good mental picture of the outside of an iglo.

Inside there is a lining of smoke-blackened boughs ~
and trunks of little trees, all shiny with grease; a

small allowance of light filters dimly in through a
membrane of seal’s bowel stretched across a hole in
the roof, and the door, hanging limp upon its seal-
hide hinges, permits the only suggestion of air to
waft sluggishly along the tunnel porch. But the
smell! ‘There is nothing like it: it is the rancid,
fishy smell of stale seal-oil. It smites your nostrils
when you go in, and the heat from the little iron
stove combines with the smell to make the stuffy
atmosphere almost unbearable. Can the Eskimos be
healthy in homes like that? Is it any wonder that
I pine to see such dens abolished ?

But the Eskimos are progressing ; iglos are get-
ting few and far between, and little wooden huts are
cropping up like mushrooms. Long efforts have at
last aroused ambition in the Eskimo mind. Your
modern hunter wants a wooden house: it only costs
a little trouble, and he knows that it is worth it.

Some fine spring morning he calls his dogs together,

and hies him to the woods. He builds a tiny snow
hut for shelter, and lives on tough dried meat. He
is after timber for a house, and from dawn to dusk
he searches for the best of the poor stunted trees and

chops them down. ‘Then he builds a sort of scaffold, —

POKER.
— ee ee a

bap wR eR a

o~! ee a
“ Ay ‘ >,
= Se en,

and gets his wife to help him saw the planks. Many ~
a time have I seen them at work with their big pit-—
saws: the man is top sawyer on the scaffold, while the —

woman stands below and does her share, and so they
308

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NOUMAFT LV SOTS]T AIO

ESKIMO HOUSES

get planks for their home. Building begins later on,
for the seal-hunting and the cod-fishing are too
important to be missed ; but, sooner or later, before
the next winter is due the Eskimo gets busy. He
lays a foundation of stones from the beach or the
hillside, and builds his beams and joists upon it; he
works long hours, intent and serious, until he can
proudly fling his tools down and say “ My house is
built.”

Some men are too poor to spend precious days in
cutting planks, or they have not dogs enough to haul
timber from the woods away in the valleys of the
mainland, and so, for them, the housing problem
remains a problem. Some day, perhaps, there will
be model houses for such men as these, either let at a
small rent, or sold by instalments; and so I fondly
dream of a healthy home for every Eskimo—but the
problem has its very practical side: who is to pay?
I must say candidly that a good proportion of the
wooden houses that already exist are a real credit to
their owners. In some of the best I have seen sofas
and harmoniums, and even linoleum on the floor:
but such houses are the homes of the mighty hunters,
who keep a servant or two to help with the seal nets,
and who are able to afford such little luxuries out of
their earnings.

The average Eskimo house is a square room, with
rather cramped accommodation for everything that

goes to make up the daily round. Just inside the

door you may stumble over the carcases of a couple
of plump seals, brought in to thaw; on the wall
behind the stove a big oily sealskin is stretched on a
frame to dry; one corner harbours a little table, on

which stands a stone lamp filled with nauseous seal-
309

ESKIMO HOUSES

oil, or maybe the seal-oil lamp is banished, and a ~
gaudy paraffin lamp from the store takes its place;

various queer-looking objects, such as snow-shoes, —

harpoons, dogs’ harness, whip, bladders for floats,

slabs of dried meat, bundles of straw for basket- —
making, skin boots and clothing, strew the edges of _
the floor or hang upon the walls, anda big corner is _
curtained or partitioned off for a sleeping-place. —
There may even be room somewhere for a new-born _
family of pups, brought in lest the other dogs should _

gobble them up when their mother was off guard;

and the children of the household_are playing all over —

the place.

Spare spaces on the walls are decorated with cards —
and pictures, or flowery-wall paper; bottles, tins,
jars, and cheap ornaments stand upon tiny home- —
made shelves, and one or two alarm clocks are sure
to be there, proclaiming their presence either by
untimely and ear-splitting chimings or by the very
loudness of their ticking. Anything will do to
beautify an Eskimo house. One of the firms that_
supplied us with cocoa had the pleasing custom of ©
enclosing a big coloured show-card in each of their
packing-cases: these were a great prize for our simple-

minded neighbours, and so it comes about that ~

various grimy little Eskimo huts on the Labrador ~
coast are graced to this day by the startling an-
nouncement that ‘‘ So-and-so’s cocoa is sold here”!

I found that warmth was the most serious thing
to be considered, for the Eskimos of these days have
got used to fires and cannot do without them. A
good many of them are even losing the sleek coating _
of fat that the northerners possess, and the stove —
takes the place of this natural overcoat ; but quite

310

ESKIMO HOUSES

apart from their personal feelings they need a stove
to thaw the seals, otherwise their work would be at
a standstill. I was chatting to some of them about
the smallness of their houses. “Ah,” they said,
“we need them small to keep warm. We cannot
manage to have more than one stove, for the woods
are so far away ; and we must have warmth to thaw
our seals.” It is true: but some of the greater
hunters have solved the problem for themselves. I
suppose they got tired of seeing grease and blood
and remnants of seals slopping about on their hard-
earned linoleum, or perhaps they wanted more space
for the periodic feasts and palavers that are held in
the bigger houses; but, whatever the why and the
wherefore, some of the men have built a lean-to
against their house, or have partitioned off an end
of their big room, and have backed the stove up
against a hole in the wall. So they have a special
little room for the seals, warmed by the back of the
dwelling-room stove ; and when I found an improve-
ment like that, springing from pure Eskimo in-
genuity, I knew that it would soon be popular with
the people, and down it went as part of my plan
for those model dwellings I have in my mind.

“Yes,” thought I, “ warmth is a problem; but the
stuffy, evil-smelling atmosphere is another.” In some
of those iglos, in winter, with their long snow tunnels
to keep the cold—and at the same time effectively
keeping the fresh air—away from the door, I have
had to gasp for breath. How can folks be mnysie’
in this sort of air ?

I am not writing of the characteristic Hakim
smell: that cannot be abolished. Every house has

some degree of the same odour; dirty houses and
311

MAKING WINDOWS

clean, old houses and new, big houses and little, all
have their share, and every Eskimo carries a hint
of it about with him. It is the smell of seal-oil,

of oil-sodden boots and harness, of lamps and cookery, | :
beds and clothes. I thought it would wash out

of the people themselves, but no; unlimited baths
in hospital failed to dispel the suggestion in the air;
it is a natural thing, the effect of a diet of raw meat
and fish and blubber. I asked one of our most
sensible men one day whether the people knew it.

“« Atsuk ” (I don’t know), he said, “‘but we do know ~
that you Kabluniks (Europeans) have an odour of ~
your own. We can always tell if any of you have ©
been in our houses”! No, the Eskimo odour will —
always be there, even in those model houses of my ~
dreams, but the stuffy, foetid air can be removed. —
How to do it? Ay, there’s the rub. I did some ~
serious cogitating about it, but, as things turned out, —
the solution came in quite an off-hand and unex- —
pected way. Tomas was building a new house, ~
and he came to me with a very simple request. “I _

want to build a good house,” he said, “because I

catch many seals. I want glass windows, not —
windows of seals’ bowels: I want to be able to see
out of my windows when the days are fine. Can —
you find me a piece of proper wood for a window ~
frame among the wood that you have?” “By ©
all means,” I told him; “here is a piece of soft pine: —
and you shall have it without payment if you will —
make a window like this of mine that opens on —

hinges.” ‘Tomas studied my window, and opened
it and shut it, and grinned, and looked at me—and

coveted that piece of pine. “Yes,” he said, “it shall —

be;” and off he trotted with his prize—surely the
312

STUBBORN LEARNERS

first Eskimo house-improvements prize! I walked
along several times to see how he was getting along
with his new house and his new window; and I
found that another man, quite a poor fellow, who
was building himself a tiny hut near by, was also
making a window to open. He had seen Tomas
at work, and, of course, was inquisitive. ‘‘ Hello,
Tomas, what sort of a window are you making?”
« Ah,” says Tomas, “new sort, very fine; see, it
openson hinges.” ‘ Piovok (that looks good): teach
me how to do it; I must have a window like that.”

Ay, even reforms can be infectious!
| I do not for a moment want to take the credit
| for those windows that opened on hinges; it would
be unfair to generations of hardworking missionaries
if I did, for there were windows on hinges before ever
I came to Labrador; but I saw a solution to my
problem in that little incident. It was a case of
working on the imitative faculties of these people,
and trusting to reforms to become habits.

What stubborn learners they are! Tell them to
do a thing, and they will do it out of mere obedience
so long as your eye is on them; but leave them to
their own devices, and they slip back to their old
ways at once. ‘They do not see the “ why ” of things.
When I ordered sanitary reforms, they always used
to raise their eyebrows. ‘ Why should we do that ?”
_ they would say, “ our fathers never did it: it is not a
custom of the people.”

But here was a peg to hang things on: the
Kskimos would imitate. Imitate! I have never seen
any one to equal them.

When I put on my skates, so as to have the

distinction of saying that I had skated on the North
313

IMITATION

Atlantic, out came the boys with slabs of firewood
and strips of bone—seal’s ribs, mostly—or waste
scraps of hoop iron from the cooper’s shop, and made _
skates for themselves. They bound them to their ©
soft boots with moist seal-hide thongs, and twirled —
and tumbled, and laughed and rubbed their bruises, _
till they could catch me up and swoop laughing — %
round me, and sail off and catch me up again.

And they imitate so thoroughly too. ¥

One day there had been a funeral, and after it —
was all over I heard a sound of singing. It was the ~
funeral hymn over again. I looked out, and sawa —
group of boys, all standing round a long hole in the ©
snow, and singing lustily. When their singing was —
finished they heaped snow into the hole, and built it”
into a mound, and very deliberately patted it smooth —
and then walked off two by two towards the village.
I could not help laughing at the young rascals, for
I suppose all children play at funerals. But these
little Eskimos were doing things properly, for after
the mock-mourners had all gone the mound gave a
great heave, and a small boy poked his head up and ~
crawled out, shaking the snow out of his shaggy hair
as he ran to join his mates. -

Yes, the Eskimos would imitate. If Moses had
dug up the filth-sodden mud floor of his hut, and
replaced it with a neat layer of boards, sure enough ~
somebody else would want to do the same, and there ~
would be a great time of digging and boarding. Some —
of the men went off to the woods for planks ; others, —
who had not dogs enough, or who were too poor to
spare the time, came to beg or buy our old packing-
cases. Some of them seemed to think the marks on —

the cases a grand ornamentation of the floor, for they —
314 ‘

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A SCRUBBING BRUSH EPISODE

turned the boards the proper way up, so that the
floors told tales of “ Cube Sugar” and “ Prime Lard”
and “ per Harmony to Okak.” But the boards were
there, and the trampled slush that I have had to
splash through on my visits, and that reeked of
what Shakespeare might have had in mind when
| he wrote “‘a very ancient and fish-like smell,’ was
abolished.

But it was all very well to teach the people to
have wooden floors; that was only half the lesson.
The floors wanted washing! Eskimo floors are
proverbially filthy ; the thing cannot be helped. If
the hunter is to earn his living, if his wife is to do
her work and make the most of his catch, the seals
must be thawed and cut up, and the floor will be
spattered with blood and oil. Floor-washing is an
established custom in most of the houses—in fact
many of them are scrubbed out every day; but it
looked as if it would be difficult to get the owners of
the dismal little iglos to alter their ways; folks who
had only got a dim inkling of the value of ventilation
and clean floors, and who had mostly lived their
lives under the shade of seal-bowel window panes
and in the odour of blubber-soaked floors—it seemed
as if it would be hard to persuade them to scrub those
floors and open those windows. But the idea was
there, working in their own minds, talked over,
maybe, at their great palavers ; better times are in
store for the Eskimos, and the making of better
things is in their own grasp, though perhaps they
only partly know it. I got a hint of the trend of
things from an Eskimo woman, a nice quiet soul,
a widow, whose misfortune it was to live in a hut

of the most horrible sort. Her son was somehow
$15

A SCRUBBING- ‘BRUSH EPISODE

inspired to build a new house. Now it happenedll

that Sarah used to do odd bits of work for us, and —
we used to pay her mostly in kind. Her quaint —
requests for payment would fill a page—once she —
came and asked for a tin of Swiss milk (!) because her —
son’s wife had got a baby, and Sarah wanted to (

a grandmother, and a very young and blooming 4
grandmother too, by giving the baby a tasty and —
appropriate present. I hoped, however, that the new ~
arrival would get fed as Eskimo babies ought, and ©
very likely the big members of the household would —
eat the Swiss milk off their fingers. But to get
back to my story: on this particular occasion Sarah
giggled and was shy. {

This was strange, and I wondered whatever could
be in Sarah’s mind. After much coaxing, out it
came. ‘My son,” said Sarah, “has built a new
house, you know, and we have got a wooden floor. —
I should like to keep it clean, and scrub it often.
Will you give me a scrubbing-brush 2”

Never have I given anything more willingly! ©
I rushed off to get that scrubbing-brush, blessing
Sarah’s good Eskimo heart for its spontaneous long-
ings after cleanliness.

One of the great difficulties that has always con- ©
fronted those who have spent their lives in teaching —
the Eskimos is that the people, in the natural
conservatism of their minds, nearly always resent
new ideas and new suggestions. My own experience ©
has been that they are far more teachable and tract- —
able when they are in a good humour. A certain ©

degree of good humour is the natural Eskimo state —
316

THE MAGIC LANTERN

of mind, and it takes but a little to bring the amount
to an effervescent, bubbling over stage.

Then was the time to point a moral; then was
the time to propose some sanitary reform; then
was the time to teach some wholesome lesson. ‘The
magic lantern was a great help in this direction: the
people shouted with glee to see their own faces on the
screen, and sat quietly listening while I told them
some Bible story or talked of better houses and ideal
home life.

I must confess that it took me some time to
understand their sense of humour. I thought that
anything obviously grotesque would make them
laugh, so I drew a caricature of a reindeer on a glass
slide and showed them that. I know that it was
funny, because the missionaries laughed; but the
Eskimos received it in stony silence. “Come,” thought
I, “this is a funny thing, you ought to enjoy this:”
and I left the grinning, knock-kneed thing on the
screen for a minute or two, and finally put in an
explanatory suggestion “ ’Tuktu-ai” (a reindeer, eh).

Big Josef’s small voice broke the silence: he is
the mighty hunter of Okak, and spoke with weight.
«‘ That is not like a reindeer: now we know that you
have never seen one. Come to the hunt with me
next Easter, and you will see what a reindeer looks
like ; then you will be able to make a better likeness.”

The first laugh I got out of them was at a picture
of one of the Nain Eskimos crouching behind a rock,
aiming at an imaginary seal with his gun. They
roared with glee, and rolled about in their seats

shouting “ Look at him—ai-ai, just see—it is Joas of
Nain, and he is shooting left-handed.” I had put

the slide in the lantern wrong side about !
317

MY HARMONIUM

I found it very easy to please the people; they —
would look at pictures by the hour, and as for music, —
it was the very summit of bliss. When I got a new
harmonium with stops there was a constant pro-—
cession of visitors to see the marvel. They gave
deep grunts of wonder when I pulled out the stops
and caused the different tones, and leaned over to
pull them for themselves; and when the coupler
stop came out and the octave keys went down with-
out any fingers touching them they edged away —
with apprehension, and then came crowding back to
see it again. bh

The best music, to their minds, is the gramo-
phone. That pleases them the most; it sings and-
plays and talks and whistles; and, as one of the
people said to me one evening when I suggested
that they had had enough, “ We could listen to it all
night.” q

Some of them had never seen a talking machine
before, and I had to laugh at their bewilderment.
They got close up to the trumpet, to see what was ~
going on at the bottom of it; they held the discs to
their ears, in the hope of hearing the music that
way; they scrambled for the worn needle-points, and
carried them home as trophies; and all the time
they kept up a running fire of comments—* Ai-ai, —
that is the voice of a very tall man; nala, it is even ©
better than our brass band; immalé, why cannot it ©
sing like an Eskimo?” |

318

CHAPTER XXVI

A Lonety Lanp—-Tue Cominc or THE Suip—Ovur Postman—
Visrrorns—Lasprapor Garpens—TuHe LANGuaGeE.

ABRADOR is a lonely land. That is its
“is reputation; but we who live and work there
round the year find it such a little world of its
| own that we have no time to mope and feel
— lonely.

Time flies, even in lonely Labrador.

But however absorbed we might be in our
work and in the people around us, however much
our thoughts might move in our little Labrador
circle, we all of us looked forward to the month of
July to bring the great red-letter day of the year,
for in the month of July we expected the ship.
It seems a wonderful thing that so small a ship
as the Harmony—a barque of 222 tons, fitted
with steam and sails—should cross the Atlantic so
regularly, and never fail, year after year, to link
us up with home and kindred; but so it is. The
Harmony is in skilful hands: there are the prayers
of God’s people behind her: and 9c that is
the explanation of the thing.

_ We could never know the day; but as July
dragged by we deserted the jetty on our daily
_ walks, and climbed the hills instead, stumbling
through sodden moss and patches of half-melted
snow for the sake of a view of the ocean. I know

that such hill climbing was futile, for the Eskimos
319

THE COMING OF THE SHIP

at their sealing-places are certain to see the ship
first and give some signal; but it relieved our feel-
ings, and that was something. We wrote our letters,
we made room in the store for the new cargo of
supplies, we talked and talked and talked about —
the ship—we could talk of nothing else—until at
last there came a sudden shout, sudden in spite of :
all our waitings. “Pujoliarluit” (the big steamer) _
it roared and shrilled from all parts of the village.
Guns banged; people came running, shouting as
they ran, racing for the jetty; and out on the
bay a man was paddling home as if for dear life. —
As soon as he was near enough to be heard he
yelled “A fire on Parkavik.” That was enough;
a fire on the beach might be cookery, but a fire
on the hill was the signal; and he in his kajak ~
had seen the smoke and had fired the two bangs”
with his gun that the people understood. Boats —
came bustling across the bay, with sails spread —
and oars all busy: and in half-an-hour the quiet —
village was populous again. Every house seemed —
to have a flag, from the big red ensign on the
Mission flagstaff to the bandanna handkerchief that —
was fluttering on an oar out of somebody’s window. —
Even the old widow in the hut behind the hospital —
was entering into the spirit of the day; she had
no flag, but she had sacrificed her red petticoat, —
and was scrambling up her roof to pin it to a
tentpole propped against the eaves. i
It was an hour or more before the ship came —
into sight, and then, when the tall masts came
peeping over the rocks of the point and the little —
black hull slipped silently into the mouth of the —
bay, the shouting and banging began afresh. The
320

bh £¢ ~S Se Ke
me Se geet Ra ~~ ae

THE COMING OF THE SHIP

men were wild with glee: I saw one brawny fellow
with a Winchester repeater letting off round after
round in his delight, until he had shot away enough
cartridges to account for dozens of prospective seals ;
he was as delighted as we, and that was his way
of showing it.

One gets a trifle sentimental in Labrador; and
I never saw the ship come or go without a lump
in my throat. It means so much, both to us
and to the Eskimos, that everybody looks upon
it with real affection; and it was with throbbing
hearts that we waited for the anchor to drop.

The ship came slowly on and on, looking
strangely near in the clear air; we could see the
fur-clad captain on the bridge, and the first mate
standing on the bow, just over the painted angel that
spreads her wings beneath the bowsprit. ‘The mate’s
hand rose; there was a sharp clatter, and the anchor
plunged into the water. At the same moment Jerry
the organist raised his voice, and the people joined
in the famous old chorale, “Now let us praise
the Lord.”

“Gud nakorilavut
Omamut illénanut.”

The Moravian Church uses it as a New Year's
hymn; and I thought it fitted in rather well with the
coming of the ship, for that is by far the biggest
milestone in the round of the Labrador year.

The Harmony was our first source of news after
the long winter, and, naturally enough, we used to
go on board all athirst for information and bursting
with questions. How the captain must have smiled
to himself at the pence Sovey

OUR POSTMAN ‘

“Ts the King alive and well?”—< How is the
world ?”—* Is there peace everywhere ?”—Such ques- |
tions do not seem so odd if you remember that we had —
not seen a newspaper since the year before! And ~
letters! We got our big budget by the ship; but :
there was always a winter bag by the overland mail ©
from Montreal to Rigolette, and this was handed i
along by one means or another until we got it about —
March. e
During the winter we had a little Labrador post —
of our own. ;

south with his sledge and dogs, to meet the —
messenger from the southern stations at Nain. —
After a stay of two or three days to give the Nain —
missionaries time to read and answer their letters— —
days which Josef spent in going the round of the ©
village and delivering the laborious salutations of —
which the Eskimos are so fond—he travelled back ~
again. We used to meet him as he drove up to the ©
Mission house, and shake his great hand, and smile, —
and tell him we were glad to see him—and so we
were.

Sometimes there were a few belated European ~
letters in the bag, a welcome spice in the pile of —
coast news; aye, we knew what it was to feel thank- —
ful for the postman, in Labrador. p}

Next day Jerry would take the mail sledge north- —
ward, while Josef rested on his laurels and told tales —
of his trip, and delivered himself of his burden of —
salutations. He went about it with great solemnity. —
He had all the greetings written down, and usually
called a mass meeting in one of the huts to get rid —

of the most of them. Sometimes he had a general —
322

OUR POSTMAN

message to deliver, and in such a case he would beg
leave to announce it after one of the meetings in
church. The congregation sat quietly in their
places, while big Josef rose and stalked solemnly to
the missionary’s table. “ Jonas and his wife, Naine-
miut (Nain people), send greetings to all the people
of Okak,” he would say in his quiet voice, and then
make his dignified way to his seat by the door, while
the people shuffled and began to pick up their hymn-
books ready for home.

Jerry, our northern postman, was a great man for
adventures; he generally had something out of the
common to relate.

Once he broke through thin ice on a river, and
had to run all day long to keep his clothes from
setting stiff and jointless—he must have known what
the old knights felt like in their armour: another
time he was caught in a storm, and had to spend a
couple of awful nights among the rocks and the
snow. When he wanted a drink of warm tea, he
cut chips off his sledge and made a fire. So much
for our great luxury, the postman.

Our other great luxuries were our occasional
visitors.

They used to come quite unexpectedly, for they
had no chance of giving warning: imagine our de-
light, therefore, at an unexpected vessel or sledge,
bringing news, and above all, bringing a fresh voice
to talk to us. I am afraid we rather bored our
visitors, dragging them into our rooms to make them
talk and tell us the news; but let them be consoled,
because their visits were real godsends to us in our

lonely land, even though they had come, first of all,

to see the Eskimos and the scenery.
323

VISITORS

Certainly the Eskimos took great interest in our
visitors. I remember one gentleman who was on
the hill taking photographs of birds, snap-shotting
them in their wild haunts. The Eskimos could
not understand this. ‘What is he doing?” they
said. ‘Takka, see him, he is crawling on his hands
and knees among the stones; ai, ai—now he is hiding
behind a rock—whatever is he after?”

One wiseacre among them, who had perhaps
heard of Klondike, suggested that the gentleman was —
finding gold! “Goldemik,” they chorussed, and
after him they went, peering and muttering as he
crouched among the moss, and searching intently
wherever he happened to make a halt. I-am not
surprised that they have the idea of gold, for the —
rocks are rich in copper and iron, and several times —
the people have brought shining lumps of pyrites to —
me, to ask “Is it gold ?” ‘

I saw one visitor gazing with rueful countenance ~
upon a ruinous-looking heap of sticks on the jetty.
He had bought a kajak the day before, and had un- ~
wisely left it out of doors to wait for the ship, and —
during the night the dogs had made a meal of it. —
No doubt they found the sealskin cover tasty; but ©
they had also made an attack on the oil-soaked :
framework, gnawing it as if it were the bones of the —
thing. The Eskimos are wise enough to put their
kajaks on poles; I thought it was to keep them dry, —
but I see now that it is partly to keep them out of ©
the jaws of the dogs.

But work was the great thing that kept
us healthy in mind and body. While the people —
were at home we were constantly among them; —

while they were away at their hunting and fishing
324

SNOW-CLEARING

there was always work to be done, either outdoors
or in.

As soon as Easter was over we set to work on
the snow-clearing. ‘This was a task for the women
and the old men, while the hunters were after the
reindeer. The snow that had drifted against our
walls during the winter had to be dug away: it
seemed an immense task, but to leave it undone
would mean that when the thaw came our floors
would be swamped and our foundations washed
away, so we followed the example of the Eskimos
and cleared it away. The biggest task was to dig
out the river. This was buried under thirty feet of
snow, caked hard with the wind, and in some parts
of it the people had to work like navvies at a railway
cutting. ‘The men used to cut the snow into blocks
with great sword-knives, and heap it on the sledges ;
then the women raced with the load down to the
beach, and tipped it among the ice-hummocks.
Easter fell late one year, and the river began to run
before its course was properly made. The first hint
I had of it was a noise at the back of the hospital,
and there I found a sort of miniature Niagara roaring
over the edge of the snow-drift and lashing against
our walls. The church floor was flooded; and some
Kskimos in a hut near by woke from their slumbers
to find their chairs and their boxes floating about,
and themselves in bed in a house full of water. We
- called for volunteers, and had soon given out all the
spades and shovels; those who were too late for
spades took hatchets and snow-knives, poles, oars,
planks, and anything, and before the day was
out the river was running furiously in its proper

channel.
$25

LABRADOR GARDENS

While we were directing the people at the snow-
clearing, we followed their example, and wore dark —
goggles to protect our eyes. Theold Eskimo custom _
was to wear a strip of wood with a narrow slit cut —
in it over each eye; but smoked glasses are so cheap
and easy to get, that the old fashion has gone out. —
The Eskimos have not big enough noses to wear the —
ordinary spectacles; at the least jolt the spectacles —
slip down into the wearer’s mouth ; so they stitch the ~
glasses into a strip of black cloth, and bind it round —

their heads.

Every spring, after the return of the reindeer —
hunters, we had our meat-tinning time. The —
hunters were very willing to bring legs of meat at a ©
reasonable price, and the washing, roasting, cutting —
up, and tinning of the meat made quite a busy week. ©
We put up enough reindeer steaks to last us two or
three dinners a week for a twelvemonth, and though ~
we were only amateurs the meat was always whole-
some. After the tinning came the gardening. This —
sounds a remarkable thing, gardening in that pro- ©
verbially bleak and barren place, Labrador; but by —
care and hard work the missionaries of years ago —

have made gardens, and we reap the benefit of their

labours. ‘There is not much soil; the spade soon —
comes on clay and rock, and probably those old —
missionaries had to carry soil in barrows and build it —

into gardens before they could get their vegetables

to take root and thrive. Six or seven feet down the —
ground is permanently frozen, as they discovered at —

Nain a few years ago, when they were digging a hole
for a flagstaff. The thick blanket of snow that
covers the soil in the winter preserves some of the

roots; our English rhubarb used to come up year
326

ie a

LABRADOR GARDENS

after year, rather stringy and small, perhaps, but
none the less alive. We got the snow cleared away
in May, and then left the ground to thaw in the
sunshine. The actual planting out did not take
place until July, and in the meantime the vegetables
were growing in the house or under frames. Our
minds used to run upon gardening from as early as
February, when we sorted the likeliest of the potatoes
from the others, and laid them on trays in the warm
store-room to sprout; but we had to wait for the
soil to thaw, and it was not until the nights began to
get a trifle milder that we dared to put our cress
and lettuce and cabbage and potatoes in the open air.

Then the gardens wanted nursing.

Our three enemies were the dogs, the mice, and
the frost.

The dogs were delighted to have a patch of
freshly dug soil for their romps and their scrambles,
but we managed to keep them out by the help of
wooden palings. Sometimes they climbed over, or
burrowed underneath, and then it was good-bye to
our garden stuff; but mostly we made things secure
enough to baffle them. The mice were a more
serious nuisance: they were wide-awake and very
hungry, and found our nice young shoots of lettuce
and cabbage very tempting, far better than buried
twigs and frozen roots. It was rather a laborious
thing to have to do, but in years when mice were
plentiful we went round every evening and covered
each shoot with an empty meat-tin, and made a
second pilgrimage in the morning to uncover them
all again. The frost we fought by covering each
row with a wooden framework; and the old widows

who worked in the blubber yard made it their
327

THE LANGUAGE

annual care to go round at night and spread sacks —
over the frame, and to take the sacks off and put

them away every morning. For this they got a —
present of a couple of dollars and an armful of green

vegetables at the end of the season, and shrill were _

their cries of ‘“ Nakomék,” and broad were their —
grins of happiness, when the time came for them to ©
get their perquisite.

And this is how we managed to persuade the |

hardier sorts of vegetables to grow to a moderate and ~
eatable size before the ground froze again in October.

And among all our other work, we had the
language to learn. It is not an easy language, but
I have this to its credit: it is beautifully gram-
matical, governed by plain, straightforward rules,
and the rules are absolutely without exceptions.
For this last reason I have even ventured to say that
I would rather learn Eskimo again than any of the
languages I had to learn at school. The great
difficulty is that the learning involves a prodigious
feat of memory; there are so many words for the
same thing under different circumstances; and it is
quite the proper thing to build up a word of fifteen
or sixteen syllables by sticking all sorts of tags and
bits between the unchanging root of a verb and its
grammatical and expressive ending. ‘To take a very
mild example—

“ Tikkipok—he comes ;
Tikki-niarasuarkér-pok—he will probably try to come.”

On the other hand, there are quite short words
which express some picturesque idea, such as dtok—
the seal which is basking on the ice in the spring

sunshine; and, taken all together, the language is a
328

THE LANGUAGE

very storehouse for the seeker after something
interesting. One thing that used to puzzle me was
the use of “ Yes” and “ No” in answer to questions.
If I said to a workman “Have you not finished
yet ?” and he answered “No,” he would mean ‘ On
the contrary, I have finished.” “Yes” would imply
“Quite so, I have not} finished.” This always
troubles new beginners, and I suppose that nobody
has escaped misunderstandings with the people over
the difference in usage. Another stumbling-block
was their misunderstanding of dependent sentences.
One day my wife said to the servant girl,
‘Veronica, if you do not do your work better, you
will have to go home ”’—and home went Veronica on
the instant, sobbing and wailing at what she thought
was her dismissal. It is very pleasant to know that
the language has been compressed in a grammar
book and dictionary, for some of the pioneers must
have had serious hours of thinking and planning to
put abstract ideas in a way that the people could
understand.

When the missionaries came, there was no word
for ‘‘forgiveness” in the whole of the Eskimo
language! ‘They set about making one, and evolved
the splendid picture-word “ Issumagijaujungnainer-
mik ” based on the verb “issuma-vok ” (he thinks).

And so the picture of forgiveness to an Eskimo
mind is “not being able to think about it any more.”

329

CHAPTER XXVII

THE Eskimo AND THE Mission

T was in 1771 that the missionaries of the Mora-
vian Church came to Labrador. Before that time
very little was known about the Eskimo people. —
Vessels seldom braved the stormy waters of Labrador, —

or, if they did, they ventured but little among the ~

numberless rocks and islands that fringe the mainland.

So it came about that the Eskimos were seldom seen; ~
and the few reports that were brought to the civilised —
world by returning fisher crews described them as a —
totally savage and uncultured people. ‘They seem to ©
have deserved the name; for the first men who —

landed from the Mission ships were killed.

But this ministering to those who live in the —
remote corners of the world seems to have been a —
specially attractive thing to the Moravian Church, —
from the very beginning of its missions to the ~
heathen; and here was a race, far off indeed, but —

none the less included in the old command, “‘ Go ye

. and preach the Gospel to every creature.” The —
missionaries came, and began their quiet work of —
preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ by word and —
example, a work that has been carried on without a —
pause through all the years since then; and so it has —

come to pass that the bleak and terrible coast of Labra-

dor is peopled by a Christian race. Only at the furthest —
north are there still heathen; a tribe of wanderers —

330

Se nea er ee ee Yor

a a

i a oN
a) re

THE ESKIMOS AND THE MISSION

who are now clustered in their tents and snow huts
around the little wooden church at Killinek.

At the older stations, with their weather-beaten
wooden huts and their trim, white-painted Mission
houses, the people are bred and born in a Christian
atmosphere, and life at these villages gives a true
picture of life in a native Christian community.

To see the people go to church is in itself an
inspiration : the bell rings, and in they flock. There
is no compulsion ; they go because they like to go;
it is a pleasure to them.

Of course during the seasons of open water the
attendance is comparatively small; the people are
scattered at their hunting and fishing places, maybe
twenty miles from the village, and though a good
number of the nearer ones come by boat for the
Sunday services, it is in the winter that we see the
church crowded every day. If any one wants to be
cheered up, I recommend an Eskimo Christmas
service. There is a dignity about it: the missionary
has the people well in hand; they listen eagerly to
what he has to say and read, and join right lustily in
the hymns: there is pathos, too, as you can see if
you look at the worn but beaming face of the cripple
packed among a pile of reindeer skins on the floor ;
there is humour, too, in the way some solemn old
hunter has to find a seat among the little children on
the front bench because the other places are all full;
he lets himself gravely down while the children nudge
one another and edge away in awe.

It,is a charming sight, to look over that sea of
faces from the missionary’s bench; every eye is fixed
on the speaker, every face is tense and eager. In

the very front are the children, on their special low
331

THE ESKIMOS AND THE MISSION

benches; at the back, against the wall, is the seat
for the mothers, where they sit with their babies

sleeping in their hoods, or waking to gaze around and _
whimper at the wonders they can see; in between —
are the boys and girls and grown up folks. Hardly
anybody stays at home: the doors are locked against _
the prowling dogs; the frozen dinner waits upon —

the floor.

There is an Eskimo organist, and close to him
sits the Eskimo choir, ready to lead the hymns or ~

sing an anthem.

Jerry, our Okak organist, plays by ear, and coaxes —

splendid harmony out of our aged pipe organ with its
octave of pedals and its row of half-a-dozen stops.

hymns are announced he pulls out his stops and

shuffles his feet on the pedals, and with a mighty —

burst of music the congregation breaks forth into

singing, while Jerry, with his magic touch, leads the

voices steadily on, in perfect tune and stately time.
It is a charming sound, the sound of singing from

these rough people; a sound the like of which was —
never known in Labrador before the missionaries —

came. The Eskimos possess no native music, no

traditional tunes, no melodious folk-songs of their —

own ; the only music that they knew was the dismal

and monotonous rhythmic chant which the heathen —

sorcerer used to aid his works of darkness. Some-
how the soil was in the people, and the seed of music

has taken root in it and changed the Eskimo nation

into one of the most musical of peoples.
Jerry is our bandmaster at Okak; and on winter

mornings, when the snow is powdering down, and
382

Fi
aa)

aise

omen i” ——. ~
«whe ~
: a

AN ESKIMO BOAT-BUILDER

As soon as the ice ori the sea shows signs of breaking, the Eskimos begin to prepare for the open
water, and the village boat-builder is in great demand. It is quite characteristic of the people that
there is always an old man to stand by and give advice.

JEREMIAS, ORGANIST AND BANDMASTER AT OKAK

Jerry, the son of old Ruth, is a very clever musician, and is able to play classical selections
on the organ. Most of the native houses boast a musical instrument of some sort—an oil-stained
violin, a concertina, or even a harmonium.

THE ESKIMOS AND THE MISSION

the chilly air nips the fingers, he leads his little troop
of bandsmen from house to house, delighting the
populace with the blare of the trumpets. He likes
to encircle himself with the bombardon, to lend a
solid foundation to the harmony; but if one of the
men is away he is quite able to take the cornet or
horn or whatever it may be, and leave the bottom
notes for Benjamin’s trombone. It is hard work,
but the bandsmen are happy; the morning frost
may settle on their heads, the moisture may freeze
inside their trumpets in spite of shawls and stockings
wrapped round them, the mouthpieces may stick
to their lips with the cold; but they are Eskimos ;
winter weather does not easily daunt them or numb
their fingers; and, besides, to play a trumpet in the
band is one of the greatest honours that an|Eskimo
knows. Good character comes first in the choosing
of the bandsmen.

Several of the old customs of the Moravian
Church have taken firm root among the Eskimos,
and though in England they are lost, in Labrador
they go on from year to year unchanged. Nature
has hemmed the land of the Eskimos in with a
broad barrier of ice; the marvels of these modern
times, which are causing other countries to move
with giant strides, leave the northern Labrador
practically untouched; the years circle with a same-
ness that marks a little world; the people them-
selves are slow to change; and so the customs of
years ago still prevail. The men and women sit
apart in the church, the men on one side, the women
on the other; the various sections of the congrega-
tion—children, single men, single women, married

people, widows—all have their special festival days,
333

THE ESKIMOS AND THE MISSION

when they wear their native dress, and eagerly listen R\

to pointed sermons addressed specially to themselves; _
modern hymn-tunes have not yet supplanted the

majestic old chorales. |
The people have their own little customs: a

young girl ties her plaited hair with a pink ribbon; —
a married woman uses blue; a widow, white. ‘The
plaits at the sides hang down in front of the girl’s —
ears, dangling in neat little knots; but when she —
becomes a full member of the church, attending the —
communion service—and this she may not do until ©
she has reached the sensible age of seventeen—she ~
loops her side plaits under her ears and fastens them
at the back of her head. These are innocent little —
things, which appeal strongly to the Eskimo love of —
the picturesque, and suit their simple minds.
The practical control of the Eskimos has been —
left in the hands of the Mission; and the Mission, ~
in turn, has taken the wise course of appointing a —
number of the people, generally three or four men —
and the same number of women, to act as helpers —
in the maintenance of law and order in the villages. —
These helpers are called “Kivgat” (literally
“servants ”), and their first duty is the care of the ~
church; but they are the virtual leaders of the ©
village life. Though they are “chapel-servants,” —
their post is one of honour: they are chosen because
of trusty and sterling character, and their service —
is for life. The least lapse from moral uprightness
would mean deposal, but. I have only once known
such a thing to happen. It seemed strange to me, —
when I thought of the old Eskimo custom of making —
the best hunter the leader, regardless of his character, —
to see our Okak people —— with respect and |
4, 7

THE ESKIMOS AND THE MISSION

approval to the advice of one of the very poorest of
the men, because he was a good man and a chapel-
servant! ‘Times have changed; and the Eskimos
have learnt a better appreciation of a man’s worth.

If there is a vacancy in their ranks, the remaining
Kivgat meet the missionary and talk over the
question of a suitable man or woman for the office,
and there never seems to be any great difference of
opinion about the right one to choose.

In addition to the chapel-servants, each village
has a committee of three or four men, elected by the
people themselves.

These men have more strictly temporal duties ;
they look after the outward welfare of the village,
and convey the wishes of the people to the mission-
aries. Elections are by ballot, and take place every
three years; and weighty functions they are. In
our village of Okak there were four representatives,
and every man thus had the right to put four names
on a piece of paper: my duty was to collect the
papers in a bowl, while the men sat solemnly in
rows in the church. The missionary gravely
unfolded the papers, and read the names aloud,
while the store-keeper and I jotted down the
numbers. It was quite evident that the thing had
been talked over for many a day, for the voting was
practically unanimous, and the reading of each
paper produced a grunt of assent from the lines of
voters. There was one spice of comic relief to the
solemnity, and that was when we discovered that
some village humorist had written his own name
four times. “Aron, Aron, Aron, Aron,” read the
missionary; and the whole assembly went off into

roars of laughter, while those who were near enough
335

THE ESKIMOS AND THE MISSION

clapped Aron on the back, and covered him with
confusion. When the counting was finished the ©
missionary read the result, and asked the four who
headed the poll to stand. “Are you willing to serve —
dutifully as an elder of the people?” he asked them ~—
one by one, and when each had given his “ Ahaila”
of assent the meeting dispersed at the simple word
‘‘ 'Taimak ” (so let it be).
These chapel-servants and elders are wonderfully
successful in maintaining the tone of native life;
they are not only trustworthy people, but they have
high ideals too. Witness their action when the
drink evil began to get a grip upon the Eskimos.
That was in 1907, after some evil genius had taught
the people to brew a vile and powerful concoction -
from treacle and mouldy biscuits. Several of the
men began to get drunk, and prowled about with all
their evil passions loosed. The chapel-servants and
elders called a meeting of the men in one of the
biggest of the huts. ‘This new habit is bad,” they
said, “it will ruin the people: let us cast it out.”
And cast it out they did. Grave-faced men, with
care upon their shoulders, travelled from Okak to
the stations north and south; men from the other
stations came to Okak; all were bent on the same —
errand, the discussion of the drink question. ‘They
returned from their journeyings with their aim
accomplished: “ Kajusimavut,” they said, “the mind ©
of the people is made up—the brewing and drinking ~
must cease.” They called the men together, and got _
a promise from every one that the kegs of liquor
should be smashed and the drink poured on the ~
snow, and that there should be no more brewing; —

and when one young man refused to smash his keg,
336

THE EsKIMO SCHOOLMASTER ‘

Nathanael, of Nain, one of the most cultured of the Eskimos. He is probably the first Eskimo
to compose music. He has written an anthem in four parts, which was sung by the Eskimo choir
at the opening of the new church at Nain a couple of years ago.

THE ESKIMOS AND THE MISSION

two of the chapel-servants went along to his hut and
did it for him. The drink evil was abolished ; and so,
by their own wish, the Eskimos became what they
had always been, a teetotal nation.

I suppose that it is a remarkable thing to find a
people amongst whom there are no prisons and no
police and practically no serious crime, but so it is
among the Eskimos of Labrador.

They are a peaceable, law-abiding folk; and the
credit for it must be given to the simple Gospel that
has raised them from the past of their race. There
is sin, yes; they are prone to fall into their besetting
weakness, a relic of the old promiscuous tent and
snow-house life; but flagrant breach of order or
discipline is very rare, so much so that a thief is almost
an unheard-of being among these kindly, open-handed
folk.

I think the thing that pleased me most in my
study of this interesting people, was the fact that
they are still true Eskimos. In all their patient
preaching and teaching the missionaries have never
forgotten that the Eskimo must remain an Eskimo if
he is to win his livelihood as a hunter in the frozen
climate of his land; and while they have instilled
habits of morality and clean living, and have; weeded
out habits that are bad and harmful, they have
urged the people to keep closely to their native foods
and habits of life, and clothing; in a word, their
policy has been to make the Eskimo a better Eskimo.
The natural isolation of Labrador has helped them in
this, and has helped them, too, to stand between the
people and the vices that civilisation might bring if it
were not grafted on their nature by careful minds.

The Mission is still hard at work, preaching the
337 Y

THE ESKIMOS AND THE MISSION

simple Gospel and caring for the people. I wondered, —
when I first went to Labrador, how some of those ©
Bible pictures, so familiar to us, could appeal to ©
a people living in so desolate a land. There are
no sheep in Labrador, no cows, no milk and honey— ~
excepting the kind in tins; no fruit-trees better than ©
the dwarfed brushwood that crawls upon the ground ;
but the Eskimo is a man who is not much troubled
by doubts; he takes his Bible literally, drinking in
its teaching with a child’s simplicity; and, by the
use of pictures and careful explanations, the Bible
stories have become as real and helpful to the Eskimos
as they are to us.

The Mission is educating the children: at every
station school is held on four days a week during the
winter months, and the children begin to attend after
their sixth birthday. Usually the smallest are taught
by an Eskimo; a wise thing, for an Eskimo has the
knack of putting things in a way that the child mind
can grasp; later, the missionary takes them in hand
and leads them from the stage of strokes and pot-—
hooks and the spelling of queer syllables to real
writing and the reading of books, and even among —
the mysteries of simple arithmetic. Reckoning is
difficult ; it is foreign to the Eskimo nature, so that —
even the numerals have had to be imported ; there
are no numbers in the Eskimo language beyond
twenty, and the word for twenty is “a whole man—
ten fingers and ten toes.” But in spite of difficulties, ©
by the time the boy and girl leave school they can —
reckon dollars and cents, and find their numbers in —
the hymn-book; and as for reading and writing, —
every Eskimo on the coast, over the age of twelve —

or thirteen, can manage so much, and their knowledge —
338

THE ESKIMOS AND THE MISSION

of the Bible would put many a more civilised person
to shame. |

There is not a very extensive literature at the
disposal of the Eskimo with a taste for reading; the
Bible is the chief book, but besides it there are trans-
lations of The Pilgrim’s Progress, Christy's Old
Organ, Jessica’s First Prayer, a book of short read-
ings in natural history and general knowledge, the
various school books, the hymn-books used in the
church—and the newspaper! The Eskimo newspaper
is by no means a daily; rather it takes the form of
an annual budget, printed by the missionaries at Nain
during the winter; but it tells the people something
of the doings of other lands, and it helps to stir their
loyalty as British subjects. I see by the copy that
reached me by post the other day, that even the
Eskimos are beginning to write articles, and doubt-
less they enjoy the conundrums that fill up a space
at the foot of one of the columns. The people like
their newspaper, and I think that it deserves its title,
though it be an unwieldy one in these days of crisp
writing : Aglait Illunainortut (The Paper for Every-
body). Far away from those who read these lines,
shut in their lonely land by the great ice-barrier, the
missionaries are standing at their posts; and by their
quiet labours, it seems to me, they are working out
the saving of a nation.

I lay my pen aside, with my mind still full of the
memories that are so vivid to me. Brown, smiling
faces pass before me ; familiar names sound in my ears ;
bright eyes look into mine; musical voices sing out-
side my window ; gruff shouts echo as the boys come
sliding down the hill; Jerry and his bandsmen march

along, waking the village with their trumpet notes ;
339

THE ESKIMOS AND THE MISSION

the!poor girl on the bed of reindeer skins whispe <i
her “ Nakomék;” the crowd on the slope of the

frozen beach sings me off into the storm; the voice
|
|

of little Johannes calls above the whining of the
dogs; and as I bid adieu to my neighbours the |
Eskimos I pass on to my reader the noble old ©
greeting that I heard so often— '

‘¢ AKSUNAI.”

340

INDEX

Abia, 103, 112

Accidents, 63, 74, 181, 184, 219,
234

Adoptions, 80

Akpik, 71

Aksunai (meaning of), 26, 51

Alaska, 22, 23

Baby, 81

Baffin’s Land, 23, 211

Band, 332, 333

Barrenness of Labrador, 22, 38, 47

Bears, 29, 43, 200, 205, 231, 256

Beliefs, heathen, 29, 43

Benjamin, 99, 272

Benjie, 305

Berries, 38, 285

Birthdays, 101

Blowhole, 244

Bob, 27

Boots, 32, 58, 59, 109, 140

Boys, 92, 235, 246

Bravery, 75, 181, 257, 267, 268,
275, 277

Bunting, snow, 98, 241

Button Islands, 27, 28, 29, 256

Carpenters, Eskimo, 261, 262, 269,
273
Carving, ivory, 105

Character, Eskimo, 21, 102, 103,
156, 161, 185, 189, 202, 221, 230,
234, 247, 251, 270, 273, 285, 293,
294, 304, 313, 316, 336, 337

Charm of Labrador, 46, 48

Children, 31, 80 ff., 263

Choice of names, 87 ff.

Christmas, 63, 331

Cleanliness, 109, 315

Clothing, 27, 31, 58, 108

Cod, 253, 254

Cold, 55, 59, 60, 120, 132, 162, 186,
212, 248

Cooking, 31, 32, 196, 280

Cousins, 278, 298

Customs, Eskimo, 70, 71, 76, 78,
90, 152, 153, 211, 223, 225, 232,
251, 278, 295, 326, 333

Cut-throat, 243

Daniel, 193 ff., 229
Dignity, 68, 102

- Direction, sense of, 187, 189, 236

Doctors, Eskimo, 289 ff.

Dogs, 46, 62, 94, 119, 122, 137, 144,
147 ff., 159, 160, 175, 183, 239,
242, 256, 261, 324, 327

—— danger from, 150, 153

—— disentangling the, 173

—— feeding the, 152, 164

Dolls, 91

Drink, 336

Education, 338
Embroidery, 108

341

INDEX

Endurance, 34, 35, 112, 137, 162,
167, 197, 277, 299

Eskimo, meaning of, 281

Eskimos, their origin, 22

appearance of, 48, 50, 215

—— the, 123, 141, 176, 211, 248,
256, 279, 337

Family likeness, 31, 85
Fatalism, 294, 297

Fever, 129, 138

Fishing, 78, 112, 113, 247, 253
Flowers, 47, 284

Food, 70, 131, 165, 240, 279
Foxes, 226, 227, 229
Frost-bite, 120, 169, 182
Frozen meat, 217

Furs, 226, 227, 230

Games, 91

Gardens, 326, 327
Good-humour, 34, 316
Government, village, 324 ff.
Graves, heathen, 23, 43, 99, 136
Gray’s Straits, 26, 27
Greenland, 22, 23, 246

Guns, 185, 205, 233 ff.

Gustaf, 217, 229

Happy Hunting Grounds, 43

Harmony, the, 25, 48, 55, 256, 274,
319, 321

Harpoon, 24, 98, 205 ff., 219

Health, 129, 308

Heathen beliefs, 24, 43

graves, 23, 43, 99, 136

Hebron, 49, 106, 114, 119, 124, 129,
187, 142, 144, 145, 275

Heredity, 85, 97, 109

Hospital, Okak, 51, 260, 264, 267,
279, 302

Houses, Eskimo, 201, 212, 307 ff.
See Iglo

Humour, sense of, 64, 155, 196, 288,
317, 335

Hunting, 24, 28, 72, 204 ff.

Ice, 56, 57, 96, 194, 214
—— breaking, 249

— new, 56, 139

Iglo, 38, 136, 307
Imitation, 216, 313
/Indians, 110, 111, 281
Influenza, 129, 291
Innuit, 22, 28, 43
Invitation, Eskimo, 125
Island, Resolution, 29, 43
Islands, Button, 27, 28, 29
Ivory carving, 105

Jakko, 219

Jakobus, 241 :

Jerry, 114,115,117, 119, 145, 204 ff, —
237, 272, 302, 321, 323, 332

Jigger, 73

Johannes, 133, 134, 154 ff., 162, 170,
182 ff., 218, 237

John, 143, 144

—— little, 66 ff.

Josef, 271, 317, 322 9

Joshua, 106, 107

Juliana, 58, 272, 280, 289

Julius, 64, 114, 115, 117, 119, 120,
145, 149, 154 ff., 170 ff., 182 ff., 208

Kajak (canoe), 24, 28, 30, 96, 204,
218, 246, 324

Kettura, 278

$42

INDEX

Kiglapeit Mountains, 167, 174, 176,
177, 184, 197, 198

Killinek, 25 ff., 117, 256, 288, 331

Kivgat, the, 334, 335

Kristian, 153, 170 ff.

Labrador, 21, 25, 46, 47, 48, 64,
129, 180, 181, 211, 241, 307, 319,
322, 326, 330, 332, 333, 337

Language, Eskimo, 247, 261, 266,
293, 328

Laziness, 104

Literature, 339

Lizetta, 287, 297

Lukas, 224

Maria, 266, 270, 292

Martin, Bishop, 115

—— 223 ff.

Meat-tinning, 326

Medicine, 266, 289

Mélé, 227 ff.

Mice, 47, 241, 285, 327

Missionaries, Moravian, 24, 330 ff.

Missionary at Okak, 51, 52, 54, 58,
265

Morals, 334, 337

Mosquitoes, 258

Motor boat, 302 ff.

Mugford, Cape, 73, 276

Mushrooms, 285

Music, 65, 318, 332

Nain, 170, 182, 189, 200, 277
Names, 87

Nappartok, 64, 145, 147
Nennok (white bear), 256, 257
Newfoundland, 254
Newspaper, Eskimo, 299, 339
Nipko, 282, 283, 284
Northern Star, the, 302

O ;
Odour, characteristic, 312

Okak, 44, 47, 49, 79, 99, 106, 108,
109, 115, 117, 129, 215, 248, 257,

335
Old age, 111
Organist, Eskimo, 210, 332
Ornaments, 310
Otok-hunting, 245

Parkavik, 121, 320

Partridge, 168, 231, 283
Paulus, 50, 208, 231, 283, 301
Pocket, the Eskimo, 109
Postman, 322

Proportion, sense of, 118

| Puppies, 95, 310

Rain, 34, 156

Ramah, 49

Raven, 151

Rebekah, 267

Reindeer, 232 ff.
Resolution Island, 29, 48
Rifle, 205

Rings of stones, 30
Running, 188, 276

Saeglek, 128
Samuel, 65, 103, 112
Sarah, 270, 293, 316
School, 99, 338

—— teachers, 99, 172, 211, 272,

338
Scurvy, 284
Sea, freezing of, 56

Seal, 35, 207, 209, 213, 223, 228,

243 ff, 256, 309

343

INDEX

Seal meat, 70, 284

Seals, uses of, 243

Shark, 43, 208, 213

Shergo, 127

Simon, Rev. H., Missionary at
Okak, 52, 265

Simplicity, 69, 102, 228, 274, 338

Sina, 217 ff.

Singing, 102, 172, 200, 271, 278,
321

Skating, 57

Sledge, making a, 114 ff.

—— strength of, 61, 222

Sleeping-bag, 166, 175

Smoking, 110, 259

Snow-clearing, 325

Snow-houses, 36, 37, 161, 162 ff,
175, 307

Snow-knife, 162

Snow, soft (Mauja), 146, 176

Storm, 74, 143, 176, 181, 186, 237,
303

Superstitions, 41 ff., 295

Surgery, Eskimo, 171, 276

Temper, 103, 246

Tent (tupek), 29, 30, 31, 32, 33,
243, 255

Thrift, 286

Tok, 61, 113

Torngak, 42, 211

Toys, 99 -

Training of children, 82, 91, 98.
See School

Training of dogs, 94, 95
Travelling box, 135

Trees, 38, 64, 65, 115, 139
Trout, 113, 247

Tuglavi, 39, 40, 41

Tuktu (reindeer), 231 ff., 239
Tutjarluk, 29

Tutjat, 27, 28, 29

Typhus fever, 138

U
Uivak, 133, 141

Vegetables, 284, 326, 327, 328
Veronica, 274, 283, 302, 329

Walrus, 24, 25, 28, 106, 133, 205,

221 }

Washing, 110, 315

Water-fetching, 61

Water-finding, 169

Wedding, 76

Whip, 94, 148, 150, 160

Wolf, 22, 167, 231

Wolverine, 230

Woman, travelling, 123

Work, men’s, 104, 105

— women’s, 68, 105, 107, 112,
287

Workmen, Eskimo, 261, 262.

Printed by BALLANTYNE, Hanson & Co.
Edinburgh & London

BINDINL SECT. SEP 26 1977

UOQUUN

PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY

E Hutton, Samuel King
99 Among the eskimos of
E7H98 Labrador
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